NCAA Opens Investigation of Basketball Team at UTEP : Probe: Remarks by a Valley College basketball player suggested violations in Texas school’s program.

Published comments by Valley College player Shelton Boykin and three other former members of the Texas-El Paso basketball program have led the NCAA to begin an investigation of the program, Texas-El Paso Athletic Director Brad Hovious said Friday.

“We do not feel we are guilty of any wrongdoing, but the publicity generated by these stories has caused the NCAA to begin a preliminary inquiry into this matter,” Hovious said. “The NCAA has not given us any specific allegations.”

Remarks by Boykin in the Times’ Valley edition Dec. 15 suggested possible rules violations at UTEP.

“When we wanted to go out, we’d get a car,” Boykin was quoted as saying. “They were nice cars, Cadillacs, Mercedes, Jaguars. . . . The coaches didn’t loan the cars, but people around the area did. The coaches went by the books, but the people, that’s a different story.”

Boykin, who played for UTEP as a freshman in the 1987-88 season, later claimed he had been misunderstood.

“It was like, if you wanted a ride somewhere, there were some friends around--just like we have friends out here--that come pick us up and take us places,” Boykin said after the Times story appeared.

Former UTEP assistant coach Nate Archibald and former players Jerry Jones and Sean Harris alluded to similar violations in a story printed last year in Newsday, a Long Island, N. Y., newspaper.

Newsday quoted the players, who left the basketball program without explanation during the 1987-88 season, as saying they received cash and free use of cars from “shoogs”--sugar daddies.

The players later claimed that they were misquoted.

Hovious said he has investigated, but has found no wrongdoing.

The NCAA could find problems that he failed to discover, Hovious said, adding that he doesn’t know the scope of the investigation.

“This is kind of like the IRS . . . you’ve paid your tax but you don’t know if you’d paid it all,” Hovious said.

NCAA investigators this week are expected to begin a stay of up to two weeks on campus.

Sophomore forward David Van Dyke said the investigation would not hurt the Miners, who are off to a 7-5 start. “Yeah, it comes at a bad time, but it should end real quick,” he said.

Calls to Coach Don Haskins’ home and office were not answered.

The UTEP basketball program never has been on probation.