It's apparently true that Townsend played at Cincinnati Northwest, Jim Walther coached at Northwest and the two have kept in touch over the past several years as Townsend went on to play football at Michigan and then be a high school basketball coach at Ann Arbor Pioneer HS. I guess Walther still coaches AAU in 'nati after leaving Colerain High a couple of years back (soon after, Bubba Walther transferred from Colerain to Moeller)My personal opinion is that if a tampering violation occured, we should be punished, but I also think it will be very, very hard to prove in this case. Also, I know from an inside source that O'Shea personally had no idea Walther was even interested in coming to OU until he showed up at practice. You see, Walther left Akron, applied to OU without any assistance from the basketball program, enrolled, and moved in on his own. We technically never contacted Akron for permission because, and the story will go, we didn't even know he wanted to come to OU. If O'Shea's assistant knew this was going on, then I guess there should be some sort of discipline.The only other recent tampering case I can recall that is similar is when Missouri was found to have tampered with Jason Conley when he transferred from VMI. Phone records showed various assistants talked with the Conleys in the months prior to the announced transfer. (Also of note: the Conleys also talked to assistants from SEVEN other schools, yet only Missouri got into trouble.) Mizzou received no scholarship, TV or tournament reductions out of the mess--which also included dozens of other major violations--and Conley was able to play without penalty for the Tigers. IMO, I think this is a case of a kid who hated it at Akron (at least this year) and wanted to make a statement with his transfer, probably more to his coach and teammates than anything else. I'm sure he's sitting there reading all of this and laughing his ass off, too.
