Karr says he knows how investigation started

~ A former Southeast women's assistant said a misunderstanding caught the NCAA's attention.

Former Southeast Missouri State women's basketball assistant coach Rick Karr believes the spark that ignited the NCAA investigation of the university's women's basketball program was a misinterpreted money transfer.

He also believes the entire process exhibited the lack of due process by the NCAA, a lack of support for former coach B.J. Smith and due diligence by the Southeast administration and dragged his own reputation through the mud.

Karr was interviewed by telephone from his home in Oklahoma on Friday after he had read the details of Southeast's additional penalties in the Tulsa World. The penalties added by the NCAA Committee on Infractions vacated all the victories from the four seasons Smith coached the program, 2002-03 to 2005-06, and wiped away the university's 2006 NCAA tournament appearance.

Karr was an assistant coach on Smith's staff for those first two seasons after following him from Northeastern Oklahoma A&M. He remains a Smith ally.

He coached at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa from 2004-05 through the 2006-07 season. He resigned to devote time to his family farm near Tulsa, and he also coaches youth basketball teams and individuals.

"Everybody who knows me knows I worked there at Southeast," Karr said, "and it has hurt me professionally. My reputation has been dragged through the mud."

Karr was known as a recruiter with international connections, which he said he built during his days working on the NAIA and junior college level. Karr said he had been traveling to Brazil for eight years, that he learned Portuguese and spent extended periods -- as long as five months -- in the country. He brought 80 players into the U.S., Karr said.

Among the players Karr helped recruit to Southeast was Brazilian-born Tatiana Conceicao, the Ohio Valley Conference's 2004-05 player of the year and an all-conference selection again in Southeast's first OVC championship season.

"I was there to get good players and be successful, win games and help them get an education," Karr said. "The day I left Southeast was the day they had the most talent they've ever had on campus. I feel good about everything I've done."

But when Karr left campus, he wonders if he left behind in his office a Western Union money transfer to his then-wife, Maria Conceicao Gomes Lobo Karr -- no relation to Tatiana Conceicao, he said. Karr also speculated the document may have been taken from the basketball offices at some point.

Somehow, the wire transfer document made its way into the hands of the NCAA during the investigation of Southeast women's basketball.

Karr said the original document, which he believes was in the amount of $1,400, was shown to him by an NCAA enforcement officer near the end of a 2- or 2 1/2-hour interview session on the campus at Oral Roberts late in the 2005-06 basketball season.

"The last time I saw it is when I sent it, and I saw it again when the NCAA showed it to me," Karr said. "I was in the process of trying to get my wife to the U.S.

"I had no idea what they wanted from me when they came to Tulsa. All the stuff [NCAA enforcement officer] Jackie Thurness asked me about happened after I left. I asked her if she wanted me to shake an 8-ball and give her an answer.

"To show you how incompetent they were, they asked me how the Brazilians going to juco got to school. They didn't know the rules. They can't find out that jucos can pay for airfare [once per year]? They think I'm buying airline tickets for Brazilian kids? How much money do they think I'm making?

"At the end of it, they said if that's all true, explain this, and they showed me the telegram."

After Karr told the investigators the transfer was made to his wife and that he had an entire stack of them he could produce, "they said, 'Tell us what involvement your wife has with basketball in Brazil.' I had been calm for two hours, but at that point I became animated."

"If they had just asked me what this is, it would have been simple, really simple," Karr said. "If they brought up the telegram first, it would have been explained. The only thing I did was get married to someone outside this country, and I sent her money."

But Karr said a lack of knowledge of Brazilian culture -- that names like Conceicao and Gomes were common in Brazil as Smith or Johnson in the U.S., he said -- allowed the transfer to turn into more than it was.

Karr has not heard back from anyone in the process regarding the transfer. A money transfers to international players was not among the violations documented in the preliminary report done by The Compliance Report on behalf of the OVC and released by Southeast in June 2006.

"All I got is an 'oops,'" Karr said. "My reputation is tarnished because the NCAA came to see me, and it is a fact they made a mistake, but nobody is saying anything. I feel like they owe me an explanation of who did this."

Karr, Smith's friend since 1983, believes it's possible the money transfer was used intentionally to create problems for the Southeast program, but he would not say that was a certainty.

"Someone took it to the administration at SEMO and the NCAA and said I was paying players," Karr said. "That person can say whatever he wants anonymously [in the NCAA process]. I don't believe this is fair. Before they trash a person's reputation, they need to do a better job."

Karr said he thought Southeast's administration also did not pursue the facts regarding the money transfer if they had access to it. Another source confirmed that the wire transfer document existed, but was unsure when it came to the NCAA's attention.

"If they ask me the question, all this stuff goes away," Karr said. "That's what got legs and started this walking.

"I'm not saying anything bad about anybody, but I think they were scared to stand up because someone had information that was an illusion," Karr said. "When you have leadership that goes down a certain path and once you go down that path, you can't go back, it becomes political and everybody is trying to save their jobs. The only person losing in this deal is, guess who? B.J. Smith.

"I want to know why nobody stood up and said, 'Hey, this is wrong.' A guy goes in there and does the best job he could do, walked the line, and it's not right."

The university had conducted an internal investigation into the program in fall 2003 and a memo from the university's then-compliance officer, Alicia Scott, to athletic director Don Kaverman in February 2004 hinted that the investigation had been compromised by coaches guiding student-athletes on answers.

In January 2006, Dobbins asked the OVC for assistance in probing allegations of unspecified violations from former assistant coach Kevin Emerick, who was on staff only for the 2004-05 season after Karr had left the program. None of the correspondences between Emerick, Scott, Kaverman, Dobbins or OVC commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher indicate specific allegations, but one from Emerick states "the violations are pervasive and include almost every area of the women's basketball program." Emerick also wrote that he had been contacted by the NCAA seeking information from him.

Emerick on Friday said he may issue a statement at some point in the future, but said "I enjoyed my nine months there. It's a great school, and I wish them well."

Dobbins was in a meeting Friday afternoon and not available for comment.

As for the violations that were disclosed in the June 2006 preliminary report -- those have only been referred to as "large in number," by the NCAA -- Karr said he was not involved in any. "I mainly focused on doing my thing," he said.

"The stuff [Smith] did was minor," he added.

Karr said if he had moved into an office and discovered a money transfer, "It would be none of my business unless I had an agenda."

Karr wants to know how his transfer ended up in the hands of the NCAA.

"I want to know who gave it to them and where did they get it," he said. "Who's going to be accountable for my reputation being tarnished?"

Karr did not rule out legal action to find out those answers and to gain compensation for the financial impact on his career.

He said he cannot get an answer to his questions under the confidential nature of the NCAA investigation procedures that were part of the reason he is out of the business.

"I would never work for an organization that didn't have due process," he said.

"There's going to be a day when the people involved are going to have to tell what happened," Karr said. "I'm trying to find out how to get these people in front of a judge. Then we have a dialogue in the open."