NC State subpoenaed for records amid ongoing FBI investigation into college basketball corruption

NC State was subpoenaed for records by a federal grand jury in January, according to a report by the Washington Post Friday afternoon. The subpoena is related to the ongoing investigation by the FBI into corruption within college basketball.

The subpoena arrived more than a month before Yahoo! Sports published a report implicating dozens of current or former college basketball players in an apparent pay-for-play scheme led by ASM Sports—including former NC State point guard Dennis Smith Jr. It’s a fair bet that the federal subpoena is for records relating to the recruitment of Smith, who may have received over $73,000 from ASM while he was still in high school.

NC State did not elaborate on the contents of the subpoena to the Post.

The time line is interesting since it means that NCSU has been dealing with the FBI probe for almost half of the season, which is a lot longer than I would have guessed. I probably should have figured that the feds would be well ahead of Yahoo!’s reporting on the matter.

Also, Kevin Keatts was left in the dark about the subpoena, which seems rather odd, but then again I ain’t a lawyer:

“NC State’s General Counsel was informed by the Southern District Court of New York that the subpoena was confidential and did not inform basketball staff about the request,” Demarest told WRAL News. “Coach Keatts was not contacted about and did not know of the subpoena when he addressed the issue in February.”

So what does this mean for NC State basketball at this point? Not much. If the FBI is still in fact-finding mode in the DSJ case—assuming that is indeed what the request for records is about—then it’s probably going to be a while before we receive additional details. It’s tough to figure where all this is heading, but it’s not going to impact this season. If, say, the school felt compelled by the FBI investigation to self-impose sanctions, it would have done so by now. None of what has been reported by the Post or Yahoo over the last few weeks was news to NC State.