Minnesota Coach Confirms He Suspended 2 Players for Drugs

Former Minnesota basketball Coach Jim Dutcher confirmed Wednesday a report that he suspended two members of the team for drug abuse, but refused to identify them.

The Minneapolis Star and Tribune reported Wednesday that the suspensions took place sometime within the past three years and that each of the players was suspended for one game and ordered to attend counseling sessions.

“That should have been a positive story in that you have a program in which young men, voluntarily and under the guarantee of confidentiality, undertake a self-help procedure,” Dutcher said in confirming the report. “But it’s become negative because everyone wants to know who was who.

“I won’t say because once you do that, you can throw out drug testing forever. The basis has got to be confidentiality.”

The revelation was the latest in a series of scandals that has hit the Gopher basketball program in recent weeks.

Dutcher resigned as head coach after three players were charged in January with raping a woman at the team’s hotel in Madison, Wis. On Tuesday, the university announced it would take disciplinary action against Dutcher for his alleged role in an effort to raise funds to pay an attorney who represented Mitch Lee in a previous case in which Lee was acquitted of rape.

Dutcher told the Star and Tribune he repeatedly questioned one player about his suspected drug abuse and the buying of marijuana when people close to the basketball program told him Minneapolis police also knew about it.

Informed of Dutcher’s statements, athletic director Paul Giel told the newspaper: “All I know is that Jim once told me he had a couple of players whose tests came back positive. I don’t know anything else about it. This is all news to me.”