Tournament Darling LIU Had a Thousand Ineligible Athletes, NCAA Says

One of the feel-good stories of March Madness is now in the NCAA’s sights.  

The Long Island University Sharks made the NCAA men’s basketball tournament this year after winning just three games just three years ago. 

It turns out the Sharks had multiple ineligible players during coach Rod Strickland’s first two seasons, when the Sharks won a combined 10 games before becoming conference contenders.  

On Wednesday, the NCAA announced a negotiated settlement with the school. The Sharks will be on probation for the next three years, which will require the school to report additional information to the NCAA in regards to its policies and procedures. LIU will have to pay a $30,000 fine plus 3% of the budget for its four highest-budgeted sports. Staff from the impacted programs will also have a two-week recruiting ban at the beginning of the academic year, when the probation period starts.  

The NCAA is vacating team and individual records from programs that had ineligible athletes in that span, which is from the 2020–21 season through 2023–24. Titles from the 2024–25 and 2025–26 seasons were not impacted, including the Sharks’ recent NEC Tournament title in men’s basketball. 

An NCAA investigation found the university’s athletic programs allowed more than 1,000 ineligible student-athletes to participate despite not completing the proper NCAA paperwork or being uncertified to compete or practice. 

The school failed “to monitor its eligibility certification process,” according to the case summary. LIU self-reported the infractions. 

In 2021, LIU’s Brooklyn campus, which competed in Division I, merged with its Long Island campus (commonly known as C.W. Post) which was Division II. The combining of the athletic departments left one compliance staff member responsible for handling the eligibility of 35 teams. The NCAA found that having one athletic department split between two locations led to communication issues between coaching and compliance staffers. 

The NCAA also found that LIU lacked a formal system to certify athlete eligibility or check on required certifications, and didn’t have a third-party system to verify it, which added to the issues created by the merger.  

LIU’s baseball, football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s golf, men’s soccer, softball, men’s indoor and outdoor track and field, women’s indoor and outdoor track and field, and women’s volleyball teams all had ineligible athletes participate in that span. 

“In total, initial eligibility certifications for 240 student-athletes were not completed before they practiced,” the report said. “Of those, 176 competed impermissibly and/or received actual and necessary expenses while ineligible or not certified. An additional 658 student-athletes competed and 111 practiced without having required forms completed.”