evan burns

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Evan Burns Released By UCLA From NLI;
Will Not Enroll This Fall--(Sept. 11, 2002)

UCLA officials issued a press release late yesterday afternoon, announcing that Evan Burns (6'-8" F) from Fairfax, a McDonald's All-American selection this past season, will not enroll at UCLA "because he did not meet NCAA initial eligibility requirements." UCLA's press release did not specify whether Burns was a "partial" qualifier or a "non-qualifier, but did note that the school does not accept either category of student-athlete, implying that he was one or the other, but not a full-qualifier.

As a point of clarification, the NCAA's "initial eligibility" standards are summarized at this link. The actual NCAA Bylaws which set forth the requirements can be found at NCAA Bylaw 14.02.9, which provides:

14.02.9.1 Qualifier. A qualifier is a student who, for purposes of determining eligibility for financial aid, practice and competition, has met all of the following requirements (see Bylaw 14.3):

( a ) Graduation from high school;

( b ) Successful completion of a required core curriculum consisting of a minimum number of courses in specified subjects;

( c ) Specified minimum grade-point average in the core curriculum; and

( d ) Specified minimum SAT or ACT score.

Precisely which criteria of those four categories specified above which were not fulfilled is not revealed by the UCLA press release, which reads as follows:

Evan Burns Released From Letter-of-Intent
Forward will not attend UCLA

Sept. 10, 2002

Evan Burns, a 6-8, 220-pound forward from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, will not be enrolling at UCLA, it was announced today.

Burns' National Letter-of-Intent, signed last April, will be voided by UCLA because he did not meet NCAA initial eligibility requirements. UCLA does not admit non-or partial qualifiers.

According to the Bruin coaching staff, Burns will pursue opportunities at other schools.

"Evan Burns is a talented young man who has a very bright future in basketball," said Bruin head coach Steve Lavin. "Our staff wishes him well in his future academic and athletic career."

The L.A. Times, in a story written by Steve Henson in this morning's edition, which carried the headline "UCLA Loses Fairfax's Burns," attempted to offer some additional information. The Times noted:

"Burns had been admitted to UCLA provisionally because his grade-point average and SAT score were acceptable. However, the NCAA Clearinghouse--which determines eligibility--is embroiled in a dispute with Fairfax over Burns' required "core" classes. Burns attended summer school at UCLA and could have remained bound by his letter of intent while appealing the NCAA ruling. But he decided to cut ties with UCLA because fall classes at San Diego State began Sept. 3 and he must gain admittance in the next few days."

However, according to a story by Billy Witz in today's Daily News, which ran below a headline which stated "UCLA Recruit Denied", the paper declared "...prized recruit Evan Burns...was denied admission to the school after his transcripts were not approved by the NCAA Clearinghouse."

So, which of the two newspaper interpretations is correct? Both....sorta, kinda.....and neither, sorta, kinda.

The Daily News has the gist of it, which is, as noted in the official press release, that UCLA doesn't give athletic grants-in-aid to an athlete who is not a full-qualifier under Bylaw 14.3. And so long as the NCAA Clearinghouse maintains the position that Burns has not completed all of the requirements and is thus not a full-qualifier, he can't be given a an athletic scholarship, which would mean that he'd have to pay his own tuition, and would not be able to play, which in turn would of course defeat the purpose of his recruitment.

And the Times also has the gist of it, sorta, but is wrong in another minor, but significant detail when it wrote that Burns "could have remained bound by his letter of intent" because a NLI becomes automatically void if by the opening day of fall classes, the prospect has not met the requirements of NCAA bylaw 14.3. While it would be a correct statement that Burns (like Michael Fey) could have remained committed to the Bruins while Fairfax and the NCAA Clearinghouse debated the issue of his core courses, it is not accurate to state that he can remain bound to an NLI which has become void.

The Daily News also repeated the earlier statement that "Burns....did not graduate from Fairfax in June..." Again, as we've noted earlier, assuming the statement to be correct (it has never been corroborated), there would be nothing remarkable about delaying graduation while working on "core" coursework requirements if the student intended to enroll for the fall term. Under NCAA rules, once a player graduates, his "core" is "frozen," meaning that a player hoping to add to, replace or take a required core course cannot graduate if he wants to enroll in the fall. While a student may use post-high-school-graduation courses to supplement or replace core courses, the rules require that unless the courses are taken at the prospect's high school, he must delay college admission and freshman eligibility for one year. So graduation would have defeated the purpose of taking additional or replacement core courses, assuming that this was indeed the real issue.

The upshot of all of this though, is that, sadly, Evan Burns will not be enrolling at UCLA this fall. He will have to look elsewhere, and that "elsewhere" at least for the moment, is purely a matter of conjecture at the moment. Both the Daily News and the Times speculate that Burns will attempt to enroll at San Diego State, or possibly Fresno State, but until its a done deal, we'll all just have to wait to see.