GCU head coach Dan Majerle recently spoke with Brad Cesmat of sports360az.com to share some of his thoughts on the NCAA basketball scandal that has rocked the programs at Arizona, Auburn, Louisville, Oklahoma State and USC.

Majerle is about to begin his fifth season as head coach at GCU.

Brad Cesmat: How closely do you know your coaches and every move that they do as assistant coaches?

Dan Majerle: Well, you would hope you know everything and obviously that’s impossible. You know, almost every day that I’ve been here for the past four years, I am told that ‘You’re the CEO of this company, and everything that happens will fall directly on you. You’re ultimately responsible for everything.’ So as a coach, I have to do my best to know exactly not only what all my coaches are doing, what my manager is doing and to the best of my ability, what my players are doing. You know, with these NCAA rules, I hardly see my players. We start our practice on Friday, and  that starts the 20 hours a week that I’m actually able to get into the gym with these guys and be a big part of their lives but you know, before that, I only get two hours a week with them on the court, so you know, we’ll go on a Tuesday from 10 to 11 and we’ll go on a Thursday from 10 to 11 and that’s about all the interaction I will get with these guys, so, to sit there and tell me that I have to be directly involved with these student-athletes, to know what they’re doing 24 hours a day, all that stuff. … It’s really really hard because I don’t get to see them as much. So I do the best I can to talk to these guys, give them the pitfalls of what’s going on, what they have to do, how careful they have to be. Obviously with my coaching staff, we meet every day and we talk about things and they understand that anything that they seem to do without my knowledge can fall directly, not only on themselves but it comes back on me, so they understand that, but it’s virtually impossible to know what every coach is doing and you just gotta trust those guys and you instill your values about what this program is all about, what I’m about, and what we want to do and hopefully they do that with great judgment.

Cesmat: Dan, with the one-and-done, does it just make what has been in the news cycle the last 24 hours … to believe that there aren’t other schools that aren’t going to come out on this story, I think is naive in anybody’s part, but, the one-and-done has just made it so people are willing to take risks and cut corners. Is that fair to say?

Majerle: Yea. … this is not a secret. This has been done for a long time. The difference now is the FBI is involved. The thing that has really bothered me is, you know, the alleged giving favors to these agents and managers that maybe you can promise a kid that you’ll send him to that direction. That’s the part that really bothers me, not that the other stuff doesn’t. But this has happened for a long time and people have known about it, so that’s what bothers me. And what’s different now is that the FBI is involved and now it’s a criminal action.

Cesmat: Have you talked to your assistants since this came out?

Majerle: Yea, we obviously been in meetings, and we’re preparing for Friday so we talk every day even when we’re not preparing and we’re in here every day discussing things. We’re just like everybody else looking at it. I’m a huge fan of some of the coaches that have come down, Sean and those guys, so you know, we talk about it and it’s a tough thing for college basketball right now so it’ll be interesting in the next couple of days.

GCU season draws near

GCU hosts ‘Midnight Madness’ on Friday, Oct. 6, to kick off the first practice of the season. The Antelopes first game is on Friday, Nov. 10 against Florida A&M.
It’s the start of GCU’s first season as a full member of the NCAA Div. I.

MORE: GCU ready for its first year of full NCAA Division I eligibility

MORE: GCU sells out season tickets for 2017-18 season

Latest developments in bribery scandal

Late Wednesday, University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins ordered an independent investigation into the actions of men’s assistant basketball coach Emanuel “Book” Richardson after he was charged and has initiated steps to fire him.

On Thursday, Oklahoma State fired assistant coach Lamont Evans for cause after the top assistant to new coach Mike Boynton was ensnared in the federal investigation of basketball recruiting at seven universities.