All the news All the time

By LYNN ZINSER

University of Connecticut men’s basketball coaches broke N.C.A.A. contact rules in the recruiting of Nate Miles, a former player, according to a report by Yahoo Sports on Wednesday. The article drew on cellphone records to detail contact among Miles, UConn coaches and a former student manager.

Yahoo cited multiple sources in establishing a relationship between Miles and Josh Nochimson, who became an agent after his years as a UConn student manager. By N.C.A.A. rules, Yahoo reported, Nochimson would be a representative of the college’s athletic interests. Therefore, providing Miles with lodging, transportation and meals, which the report alleges, might be a serious violation.

UConn released a statement on Wednesday addressing the allegations and promising to look into the report’s details.

“The N.C.A.A.’s Eligibility Center reviewed all information that it had concerning the student-athlete’s eligibility status and determined that he was eligible for his freshman year,” the statement said. “The student-athlete departed from the university before ever participating in athletics competition.”

The controversy surrounds Miles, a 6-foot-7 swingman from Toledo, Ohio, who signed with UConn in 2007 and was expelled as a freshman in 2008 when he violated a restraining order obtained against him by a female student. Miles never played a game for UConn and played this season at the College of Southern Idaho, a junior college.

N.C.A.A. rules limit contact to one phone call a month to recruits (or their family or associates) still in their junior year of high school, but Yahoo reported a stream of communications with Nochimson and significant phone calls and texts to Miles himself. Tom Moore, a former UConn assistant coach, was reported to have made 27 calls to Miles’s guardian and a man Miles called his uncle as well as three calls to Miles in December 2006 alone.

“The university takes very seriously its responsibilities of N.C.A.A. membership and will do all that is expected to follow up on any information related to possible N.C.A.A. rules violations,” the college’s statement said.

The Yahoo article, by Adrian Wojnarowski and Dan Wetzel, includes cellphone records obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request.