They were treated like rock stars in high school, traveling around the country and playing in high-profile games. I once joked in print that college basketball could only be a letdown for the Lone Peak Three, after their national splash as teenagers.
This is not funny anymore, though. The Curse of the Knights continues. BYU guard Nick Emery is a subject of an NCAA investigation about receiving improper benefits from a booster, potentially jeopardizing part of his junior season. This news comes after a summer when former prep teammate Eric Mika left BYU with two years of eligibility remaining and went undrafted by the NBA before signing to play in Italy.
So what will happen to TJ Haws? Maybe he will be exempt from the LP3 jinx and keep chasing his brother Tyler’s BYU career scoring record over the next three seasons, but who knows?
Here’s hoping Haws can rise above a Lone Peak culture of entitlement that may have ensnared Emery, apparently leading him to accept gifts from a Cougar Club booster in violation of NCAA rules. If any college athlete should have tried to do everything by the book, it is Emery, in the wake of his infamous punch of a Utah player as a freshman.
Instead, he may have brought more trouble on himself and a Cougar athletic department that needs good news right about now, with the football team standing 1-7 and the basketball program having become somewhat stale. Unfairly or not, coach Dave Rose is dealing with fans’ dissatisfaction as he enters his 13th season on the job, and this won’t help. BYU may face sanctions and Emery could be suspended for anywhere from a few games to about half of the season, judging by precedents in football with a shorter season.
Eight football players at Miami were suspended in 2011 for between one and eight games, with the bigger penalties involving inducements to recruits. Emery’s case is different, so his punishment — if any — likely will fall at the shorter end of the scale. But that’s potentially damaging enough, for him and a school that has avoided NCAA trouble in flagship sports.
Emery’s cryptic comments during BYU’s media day this month might make sense now. He spoke of reassessing his life during the summer and sending text messages to Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak and ex-Ute guard Brandon Taylor as an act of contrition, stemming from the December 2015 incident in Salt Lake City. More apologies, apparently, may be forthcoming.
Wow. What a downturn this may become for Emery, four years after he joined Mika, Haws, current Utah Valley guard Conner Toolson and BYU football player Talon Shumway on the Lone Peak team that became a phenomenon under coach Quincy Lewis, now a BYU assistant.
In the 2013 Class 5A state championship game, Lone Peak earned a mythical national title by beating Alta 72-39 in Ogden. That was a routine performance for the Knights against Utah competition, inspiring big hopes for their collegiate careers.
So none of this stuff is what BYU fans were expecting from the LP3, having long anticipated their reunion last year. The Cougars lost to Utah Valley and some lower-tier West Coast Conference opponents, and not even an upset of previously unbeaten Gonzaga on the road was enough to salvage a season that ended with a first-round NIT defeat.
And then Mika entered the draft, a decision that hardly was validated by his failing to sign an NBA contract. Rose was regrouping with a return to his fast-paced offensive style without Mika in the middle, but nobody’s sure what the Cougars will look like if Emery is missing for a while.
The checkpoints of his possible suspension are interesting. BYU plays at UVU in Game 7 and at Utah State in Game 8, meets Weber State at Vivint Smart Home Arena in Game 10 and hosts Utah in Game 11 in mid-December.
None of those games may be affected, depending on the timing of the investigation and how it plays out. Emery may have achieved something that seemed almost impossible, though, producing off-court issues that overshadow his freshman misadventures at the Huntsman Center.