Did UNLV Break Rules in Recruiting of Love? : College basketball: Rebels allegedly accepted the help of a Utah businessman and part-time coach to secure reserve center, in violation of NCAA rules.

At the same time its basketball recruiting practices were being scrutinized by the NCAA, the University of Nevada Las Vegas was using an outside representative in apparent violation of NCAA rules in the recruitment of Melvin Love, a backup center for the Rebels last season, a Times investigation has shown.

UNLV basketball staff members accepted the assistance of a Salt Lake City businessman, Vic Deauvono, in the recruiting of Love, according to interviews with persons familiar with the situation and to court and state records. Love spent two years at Salt Lake Community College after leaving Cajon High in San Bernardino in 1987.

Deauvono, who at one time served as an unofficial strength and conditioning coach at Salt Lake Community College, steered Love to UNLV and then arranged special tutoring in Las Vegas to help Love become eligible to play for the Rebels.

A 6-foot-9, 225-pound junior, Love appeared in 19 games, two in the NCAA tournament, for the Rebels last season and is expected to be part of a rebuilt UNLV team in 1991-92.

NCAA rules prohibit representatives of a university’s athletic interests from being involved in recruiting, as well as providing certain benefits, including tutoring, for prospective student athletes.

Although Deauvono has no obvious ties to UNLV, he had frequent dealings with UNLV basketball staff members, including Coach Jerry Tarkanian, during Love’s recruitment.

Under NCAA rules, anyone known by a member of a school’s athletic staff to be assisting in recruiting can be deemed a representative of that school--a designation that, in some cases, has allowed the NCAA to hold schools accountable for the actions of the so-called middlemen who have increasingly become part of college basketball recruiting.

Deauvono, currently plant manager for a sportswear manufacturing company in Salt Lake City, declined to be interviewed for this story except to say he has “helped” Love and other players who have spent time at Salt Lake Community College, but has no ties to any NCAA school.

“I’m going to help another five kids next year, and nobody can stop me,” he said. “I have no affiliation with any university.”

Tarkanian would only say that Deauvono was not involved in UNLV’s recruiting of Love.

“I hardly know Vic,” Tarkanian said. “He cares about his kids, and that’s it. We had no problem with (recruiting) Melvin Love. He recruited us. . . . I’ve never had a recruit that easy. . . . I respect the fact that Vic really loves his kids. That’s all I know.”

There is evidence to suggest, however, that Deauvono, while in contact with members of the UNLV basketball staff, orchestrated Love’s signing with UNLV and then aided in securing academic eligibility for him at the school--going so far as to arrange for a friend to move to Las Vegas and serve as Love’s personal tutor.

“Vic wanted to hook Mel up with Vegas. That’s the thing,” said Issy Washington Jr., a former Carson High player who was the Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) point guard in 1988-89. “Why (he wanted to do it) is hard to say. I guess Vic and Tark were friends. . . . That’s the impression I got, that Vic and Tark were pretty tight.”

Love signed a letter of intent to play at UNLV in November of 1988, the beginning of his second season at SLCC.

But, according to SLCC officials, he was reading at a third grade level when he attended the junior college. And when he left the SLCC in the spring of ‘89, he fell far short of obtaining the necessary credits to be eligible at UNLV under NCAA rules.

Love then moved to Las Vegas, where, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, he attended Clark County Community College. He compiled enough credits there to become eligible to play for the Rebels in January.

Love declined to be interviewed for this story.

UNLV is in the process of responding to a letter of official inquiry from the NCAA, listing 29 areas of alleged rules violations, the result of a preliminary inquiry initiated by the NCAA in 1987.

Many of the alleged violations stem from the school’s recruiting of Lloyd Daniels, former New York City high school star, who had dropped out of school and reportedly read at the third grade level when he was placed at Mt. San Antonio College by UNLV in 1986.

UNLV has until June 1 to respond to the charges in the letter.

SCHOOL DECISIONS

In addition to Deauvono’s dealings with Love on behalf of UNLV, The Times found that the University of Utah also used a middleman, Bob Iverson, former Salt Lake Community College recruiter, in apparent violation of NCAA rules in recruiting Love at the junior college.

Recalling Love’s recruitment, former SLCC player Richard Casaus said: “Melvin was really undecided (on his college choice). Bob was pushing the University of Utah. Vic was pushing UNLV. I think Vic knows people at UNLV. For some reason, he was set on getting Melvin to UNLV, and Bob was set on getting him to Utah.

“It was like he was up for auction to the highest bidder.”

Given Love’s personality, Casaus said, it wasn’t surprising that Deauvono and Iverson were trying to influence his selection of a college.

“He didn’t have direction,” Casaus said. “You could see how all his life he had been led (by someone). . . . I remember one day, in his room, there were 20, 30 (recruiting) letters from colleges, and he was just looking at the pictures because he couldn’t read (the text).”

At Cajon High, Love averaged 29 points and 16 rebounds as a senior in 1986-87 and drew feelers from Division I schools.

But he was a player with an asterisk--an academic record that indicated he had little chance of meeting most schools’ admission standards, much less the NCAA’s Proposition 48 requirements for freshman eligibility.

With junior college his only real option, Love settled on Salt Lake Community College, its basketball program only a year old at the time, at the direction of Iverson, a former Upland summer league coach who had used his Southern California playground connections to land a spot as an unpaid recruiter and scout for the school.

In his first season at SLCC, Love was the leading scorer on a 28-8 team, rekindling the interest of college coaches and capturing the attention of SLCC’s volunteer strength and conditioning coach, Deauvono.

A HANGER-ON

A body builder and former concert promoter, Deauvono, 41, has long been on the fringe of the Salt Lake City basketball scene.

Although his own playing career ended with a stint with the University of Utah freshman team in 1969, he was able to forge a close friendship with the school’s star of that era, Mike Newlin, a guard who went on to an 11-year NBA career.

Their friendship ended in 1975, when Deauvono sued Newlin in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, seeking $100,000 in damages for injuries he claimed to have suffered during an altercation with Newlin that year.

The suit was dismissed without cost to either party nine months after it was filed, and Newlin, now a Houston Rocket broadcaster, says it was nothing more than an attempt by Deauvono to get a slice of an NBA salary.

“It was the quintessential gesture of envy,” Newlin said. “I provided him with opportunities constantly, but that wasn’t enough.”

Deauvono eventually developed a relationship with Utah Jazz forward Thurl Bailey, devising a program to help Bailey build up his weight.

But the Jazz did not approve of Bailey using a body-building program that had not been authorized by the team. As a means of discouraging the relationship, Jazz officials barred Deauvono from the team’s dressing room and practices.

“I think we just kicked him out of the locker room and out of practice, and I think (the situation) got old (for Deauvono),” said Jazz President Frank Layden, who was the team’s coach at the time. “You know, (Deauvono) wants to be around. Like a lot of people, he would like to be associated with the Jazz, be visible with the team. . . . But I don’t like the hangers-on. I’m scared to death of them.”

When Dave Osborn, president of a Salt Lake City clothing manufacturing company, became the basketball coach at Salt Lake Community College in 1987, Deauvono, then the marketing director for Osborn’s firm, assumed a role as voluntary strength and conditioning coach for the SLCC team.

TIES TO UNLV

Deauvono’s bonds with UNLV might have been formed in the fall of 1987, soon after he became involved with the SLCC program, when NCAA enforcement representative Dan Calandro came to Salt Lake City to interview James Jones, a UNLV recruit who was completing his junior college work at SLCC.

As one of Lloyd Daniels’ roommates at Mt. San Antonio College the previous fall, Jones figured prominently in the NCAA’s inquiry into UNLV’s recruiting of Daniels.

Deauvono and Osborn “talked to Vegas,” according to Bob Iverson, before allowing Jones to speak to Calandro. Deauvono then insisted on sitting in on the interview, Iverson said.

“Vic tried to take a tape recorder into the meeting, but the NCAA guy wouldn’t let him,” he said. “So Vic copies down all the questions and answers, almost gets in two or three fights with (Calandro) and comes out of the meeting just laughing his head off.”

By the following year, SLCC players and others who were close to the program could see stronger ties between Deauvono and UNLV.

Steve Donelson, a former SLCC player who was working for Osborn’s company in the summer of 1988, remembers Deauvono fielding numerous calls in his office at the firm from Tarkanian.

“(Deauvono) would come out (of his office) and say, ‘That’s Tarkanian checking up on the boys,’ and have a big smile on his face,” Donelson said. “It wasn’t uncommon to see Vic on the phone with Tarkanian.”

Also, starting with the 1988-89 season, Deauvono was dispensing Nike shoes and gym bags to SLCC players and, according to Richard Casaus, talking about how the shoes and bags came directly from Sonny Vaccaro, Nike’s college basketball representative.

Recalling how Nike became the official shoe of the Salt Lake Community College Bruins, Casaus said: “(The shoes) didn’t go through the school. They went through Vic. It was crazy. You’d think they would go through the school.”

Tarkanian has a shoe contract with Nike, which pays him a reported $120,000 a year, and he and Vaccaro are close friends.

Vaccaro, however, said he supplied the shoes and bags at Deauvono’s request and did so solely on the basis of SLCC’s reputation at the time as an emerging junior college basketball power.

The beginning of the 1988-89 season was also the time that SLCC players and others close to the program began noticing that Deauvono was pressuring Love, in his final year at SLCC, to sign with UNLV.

“I’d see Melvin all the time,” Donelson said. “I’d ask, ‘Where are you going (to college)?’ He’d say, ‘Vic keeps saying I’m going to UNLV.’ I know Vic kept insisting that Melvin go to UNLV.”

Said Issy Washington Jr.: “Mel would get kind of rebellious. He’d say, ‘Man, skip UNLV. I don’t want to go to UNLV.’ And Vic would almost have a fit.”

Why?

“I guess (Love going to UNLV) was better for Vic’s friendship with Tark,” Washington said. “ . . . He just loves Tark. I guess Tark was his idol. ‘Tark this. Tark that.’ . . . I used to get tired of him talking about Vegas.”

As the November signing period for 1988 arrived, Love was, in fact, on the fence, trying to make a choice between UNLV and the University of Utah, with Deauvono and Iverson coming at him from both sides.

GOING TO LAS VEGAS

Salt Lake Community College administrators had forced Iverson to cut his ties to the school the previous spring, when officials at Dixie College in St. George, Utah, wrote a letter to SLCC protesting the alleged sexual abuse of a Dixie female student by an SLCC player. Dixie College officials claimed in the letter that Iverson had been helping SLCC players pick up women at the time the alleged incident took place.

Iverson said he left the player at the woman’s dormitory while trying to find another player who had violated curfew. He denied any knowledge of the alleged incident.

In any event, the matter did not slow Iverson, still living in Salt Lake City, in his pursuit of players for junior college programs, including SLCC, during the 1988-89 season.

Nor did it end his relationship with Love.

Expecting Love to sign with the Utes, Iverson said he went to the Utah campus in Salt Lake City, obtained a letter of intent from a secretary and took the letter back to the SLCC campus for a scheduled meeting with Love--actions that would, under NCAA rules, indicate that he was working improperly as a representative of Utah.

Currently a graduate assistant coach at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Iverson acknowledged that he had planned to make sure that Love signed with Utah, but added: “I didn’t give a damn where Melvin signed. I just didn’t want Vic to use the kids.”

Iverson had, however, developed ties to the Utah program during the previous season, according to Keith West, a Salt Lake City high school coach who was assisting with the SLCC program at the time, by paying special attention to two SLCC players, Mark Lenoir and Michael Bullock, who had been placed at the junior college by Utah and would eventually sign with the Utes.

“(Iverson) kind of baby-sat those kids for Utah,” West said. “He was kind of a ‘gofer’ if they needed food or something.”

Said Utah State Athletic Director Rod Tueller, who knows Iverson well: “I think Bob has made some errors in judgment, but he is an honest kid. His biggest problem is he doesn’t know the rules, NCAA or junior college.”

Lynn Archibald, Utah’s coach at the time and now an assistant at Arizona State, declined to be interviewed for this article.

As it turned out, Iverson was unable to find Love at their meeting place, the SLCC student center, at the appointed hour because, according to Iverson and others, Love had left the campus with Deauvono.

Shortly thereafter, following a brief absence from the team, Love announced that he would sign with UNLV.

“I remember Iverson coming down (to the campus) and asking, ‘Where’s Melvin?’ and somebody said, ‘He left with Vic,’ ” said Paul Seeley, a forward from Nogales High School in La Puente, who played at SLCC that season. “(Iverson) said, ‘Do you know if Vic took Melvin to Vegas?’ Nobody knew one way or the other. Melvin was gone for a day--an evening maybe--and he was back by practice (the next day). He said he was going to sign with Vegas.”

Recalled Max Lloyd, an SLCC assistant coach at the time: “Melvin told me initially that he was going to sign with Utah. I said, ‘Great. That’s a good school.’ Then, when I found out he hadn’t signed, I said, ‘What happened?’ . . . He told me that Vic wanted him to sign with Vegas, was convincing him that that was the better deal for him.”

Records for telephone credit cards issued to the UNLV basketball staff in the fall of 1988 indicate that Deauvono was in regular contact with UNLV coaches during the height of the recruiting period.

The records show that four calls, each about a week apart, were made between Nov. 3, 1988, and Dec. 5, 1988, to what was then, according to court records in Salt Lake City, Deauvono’s home number.

Three of the calls were placed from UNLV assistant coach Ron Ganulin’s home number. The fourth was made from Lahaina, Hawaii, when the Rebels were participating in the Maui Classic basketball tournament.

Ganulin said the calls were regarding former Pomona High star Tank Collins, who spent the fall of ’88 at SLCC and signed with the University of New Orleans that November, and not Love.

“I had to tell (Deauvono) we liked Tank, but Tark wasn’t sure (about Collins) because (Collins) didn’t shoot three-pointers--that kind of stuff,” Ganulin said. “It was nothing about Mel’s recruitment.”

In mid-December of ‘88, on the way to a tournament in Pasadena, Deauvono, driving one of two team vans, stopped in Las Vegas, where he and Love met with Tarkanian in Tarkanian’s office at the Thomas and Mack Center, according to former SLCC players who rode with Deauvono that day.

Deauvono, Tarkanian and Love met in Tarkanian’s office for about 20 minutes while the other players making the trip waited outside, the former SLCC players said.

According to Dan Farr, a former SLCC player who was with Deauvono that day, Deauvono did not explain why he and Love had met with Tarkanian, although Farr said he heard the meeting was for “recruiting Mel Love.”

BREAKING THE TIES

Deauvono’s association with SLCC ended a month later, when Osborn, his boss in the clothing manufacturing business at the time, resigned as the Bruins’ coach.

Osborn gave up the position after the revelation that an SLCC player, former Crenshaw High star John Staggers, had gained his eligibility at SLCC with a high school equivalency (GED) certificate obtained with a fraudulent test score.

Although no SLCC coaches were publicly implicated in the matter, The Times obtained a copy of a letter in which the SLCC player who took the GED test for Staggers, Paul Seeley, informed Judd Morgan, the school’s vice president for student services, that unidentified members of the SLCC basketball staff conceived and participated in the scheme.

In a recent interview with The Times, Seeley, who went on to play briefly at Gonzaga, said he agreed to take Staggers’ GED test only after another player told him that Deauvono would pay him to do it. The scheme was uncovered by school and National Junior College Athletic Assn. officials, however, before any money changed hands, Seeley said.

Despite the controversy, Deauvono remained an influential part of Love’s life as well as a key player in the recruiting game, stepping in to help Love gain his eligibility at UNLV.

As an athlete who did not meet Prop. 48 standards coming out of high school, Love had to leave Salt Lake Community College with an Associate of Arts degree and either 48 semester hours or 72 quarter hours of transferable degree credit to become eligible at UNLV in time for the 1989-90 season.

However, according to SLCC officials, he fell far short of meeting those requirements. Many of his classes at SLCC, the officials said, were in the school’s developmental studies program, basic education courses that, for the most part, are not applicable toward an Associate of Arts degree.

With UNLV unable, under NCAA rules, to provide Love with a scholarship or pay any of his educational expenses until he gained his eligibility, Deauvono made it known, according to Bob Iverson, that he would pay for the additional schooling Love needed to become eligible to play for the Rebels.

Iverson said Deauvono told him that he was also seeking somebody to go to Las Vegas and serve as Love’s personal tutor--a job that eventually would go to Stephen Kiger, 40, a one-time roommate and co-worker of Deauvono, who had conducted tutoring sessions for SLCC basketball players during the 1988-89 season.

Said Steve Donelson of Kiger: “He’s Vic’s little assistant, so to speak. He’s kind of like a hustler, and Vic kind of takes care of him.”

GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL

According to Max Lloyd, the former SLCC assistant coach who is now a substitute teacher in Salt Lake City, Kiger assumed his role as Love’s tutor not long after meeting with Tarkanian and Mike Alsup, the athletic academic consultant for the UNLV basketball program.

Lloyd recalled that, during a trip to Las Vegas with Kiger to see a high school basketball tournament in the spring of 1989, Kiger suggested they go to the Thomas and Mack Center to visit Tarkanian.

Lloyd said that Kiger introduced him to Tarkanian during the visit and also met with Alsup.

Kiger and Alsup, according to Lloyd, talked about how “they had to get (Love) down there and get him eligible.”

A short time later, Lloyd said, Kiger announced that he was leaving Salt Lake City to live with Love in Las Vegas.

Said Lloyd: “He told me he was going down there to tutor Melvin. ‘To help Melvin,’ he said.”

Alsup said he remembers meeting with Kiger in the spring of ‘89, but does not remember what was discussed.

Evidence suggests that Ganulin, the UNLV assistant, was in contact with Deauvono during that period as well.

Four long-distance calls charged to Ganulin’s motel room at the 1989 Final Four in Seattle were noted as being to “Coach Deauvono” on a receipt Ganulin submitted to UNLV as part of his travel expenses in April of ’89.

Ganulin said he does not remember those calls.

Court and state records in Nevada show that during the 1989-90 school year, as Love attempted to put together enough credits to gain his eligibility, he shared an apartment near the UNLV campus with Kiger and James Jones, then playing for the Rebels.

Court and state motor vehicle records in Nevada and Utah show that, at the same time, Kiger had the use of a 1982 Saab 900 Turbo registered to Deauvono.

Recalling a conversation he had with Deauvono after Love had gone to Las Vegas, Issy Washington Jr. said: “I said, ‘How’s Mel doing?’ and (Deauvono) said, ‘OK. He’s red-shirting, getting strong, and I’ve got Steve down there with him helping him with his studies.’ ”

Said Paul Seeley: “I was told that Steve was taking Melvin to class, helping Melvin do what he was supposed to do--or at least be where he was supposed to be.”

Efforts by The Times to contact Kiger were unsuccessful.

During the past season, Love gained his eligibility at UNLV, and Deauvono maintained his ties to the school’s basketball program, traveling on the team’s charter flight to the NCAA West Regional in Seattle, according to a source close to the program, who asked not to be identified.

It is the view of some who know Love that his presence on the UNLV roster justifies whatever steps might have been taken to put him there.

Even Bob Iverson, a middleman spurned, believes that Deauvono and Kiger have had a positive effect on Love.

“Melvin came and gave me a hug last summer,” he said. “It had been a year since I’d seen him, and I couldn’t believe how much he had matured. I told him, ‘I thought you were selling your soul when you got involved with Vic and Steve, but the bottom line is they’ve stuck by you and helped you.’ ”

But some familiar with the situation see it differently.

Max Lloyd, for one, calls Love a “victim” of those who have continually run interference for him, and there are others who would agree.

Said Paul Seeley: “All of them do what they want with him, and the sad thing about it is he’s going to let them.”

Times staff writer Elliott Almond and Times researcher Jim Cady contributed to this story.

THE KEY FIGURES

Some of the key figures in the recruitment of Melvin Love at Nevada Las Vegas.

Melvin Love: A 6-foot-9, 225-pound center from Cajon High in San Bernardino and Salt Lake Community College, who became eligible at UNLV in the middle of the 1990-91 season.

Vic Deauvono: Plant manager for a Salt Lake City clothing manufacturing company and former volunteer strength and conditioning coach at Salt Lake Community College.

Bob Iverson: A graduate assistant coach at the University of Alaska Anchorage and former Upland summer league coach, who became an unpaid recruiter for Salt Lake Community College.

Stephen Kiger: A one-time roommate and co-worker of Vic Deauvono, who conducted tutoring sessions for Salt Lake Community College basketball players.

Ron Ganulin: UNLV assistant basketball coach.