Notre Dame has dismissed Jerian Grant, the team’s leading scorer and best overall player from the college basketball program due to an academic issue. He is no longer enrolled at school. It’s been a very rough year for “Chicago’s ACC Team,” with losses to Indiana State, North Dakota State and Saturday choking away a potential signature win versus #3 Ohio State in New York City. The Irish had the Buckeyes down 8 with 50 seconds to go. The Irish enter ACC play 8-4 with no resume non-conference victories.
Extremely disappointing, especially when you consider their preseason top 20 ranking.
And now they will be sans Jerian Grant, due to academic problems. This situation is slightly similar to Everett Golson and the college football version of Chicago’s ACC Team.
Here’s the Jerian Grant statement he released Sunday, where he fully owns up to his mistakes:
I take full responsibility for my lack of good judgment and the poor decision that I made. I have no one to blame but myself for the situation. I know and understand the expectations that go with being a student at Notre Dame and I did not live up to those standards.
Jerian Grant will have one year of eligibility remaining. He’s enjoyed quite a stellar career in South Bend, and this was his best season thus far, averaging over 19 points per game and 6 assists per game. ND Coach Mike Brey had a teleconference with the media today and he discussed the Jerian Grant statement and situation.
Said Notre Dame Head Coach Mike Brey today:
“One thing that’s very clear, Jerian Grant is going to serve a heck of a penalty. He’s really serving a heck of a penalty. Here’s a guy that was on track to graduate, and he needs to because he made the mistake and he owns up to it.”
Both Brey and Grant are alums of De Matha high school. So Brey talked about possible job opportunities for Jerian Grant during the time he is not a ND student and not with the team.
Brey said:
I think there is some opportunity at DeMatha with Coach Jones and people helping out. One of the things his mother and I talked about is he needs to get a job. He needs to work. I think that’s part of growing up and learning from things.
But there are a lot of people in the Washington area, I mentioned DeMatha, his AAU program, Team Takeover, I think they’d like him to coach the 8th grade team some. I think he may go visit some people. Maybe he goes out and visits Grant who is out west and those type of things.
But I think he’ll have he loves to play and workout. I think in D.C. between Mike Jones’ high school coach and Keith Stevens his AAU coach at Team Takeover, they’ll have him on a good workout plan and we’ll be in close touch with him.
Also, it looks like the trip to Italy next summer is the earliest that Jerian Grant can return to school. That’s if everything goes right, and the paper work is done on time, etc. And here’s a final interesting Q&A from this morning:
Q. Coach, obviously this has all happened very fast. But have you had a chance to speak to Coach Kelly, or do you have a thought to speak with him just because he’s obviously recently gone through a very similar situation with his team?
COACH BREY: That’s a great question. I have not, and I think being here 14 years I haven’t gone through one of these specific situations but I’ve gone through a lot of different ones. I think every situation is different. Jerian’s is too. I think I have a pretty good handle on this and, again, because again, I would compare it back to the McAlarney situation because even though it was a different rule that was broken, it came at the same time, almost exactly the same time. We threw Tory Jackson as a starting point guard, I believe, against Stony Brook, and we opened Big East play with Louisville. So there is that reference point that’s really helpful for me.
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. He’s also an analyst for multiple news talk radio stations across the country; with regular weekly segments on NBC and Fox Sports Radio. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks) and RSS Catch him Tuesdays talking Illini and Northwestern for KOZN 1620 The Zone, Fridays talking Chicago Bears for WAOR 95.7 The Fan