NCAA denies Braxton Beverly’s appeal; Beverly will sit out 2017-18 season

The NCAA is back in top form Monday morning, screwing a kid over a very narrow, technical interpretation of one of its many stupid rules. NC State point guard will not be allowed to play this season, all because he briefly attended summer classes at Ohio State before Thad Matta was fired.

That was all the NCAA needed to rule Beverly an undergraduate transfer with the requisite penalty of one-year bar from playing. He can practice this year—just like State’s other two undergrad transfers—but he’ll have to wait until Nov. 2018 to see his first game action.

This is utterly, wholly, cosmically stupid, of course, but am I surprised by any of it? No, not in the least. The NCAA is very good at having selective tunnel vision when it is so inclined, especially when it can point to a clear-cut piece of the rule book. Nevermind the circumstances! Without rules there is only college basketball anarchy! Chaos in the streets! Dogs and cats living together!

So Beverly receives no sympathy for a situation entirely out of his control—namely the unusually late firing of Matta. If Matta is fired at a normal point on the calendar, i.e., months before June, Beverly never enrolls in summer school, and when he gets his release, he’s back to being a normal high school recruit in the eyes of the NCAA.

These were unusual circumstances, but the NCAA opted to make context in this case irrelevant. Who needs common sense, anyway.