Report: One Current and Two Former Big Ten Players Implicated In FBI Probe

Since the FBI’s probe into college basketball became public knowledge months ago, fans have wondered when the next news would drop. Then a few weeks ago, ESPN and others reported that a mountain of important developments were on the way. This was allegedly supported to implicate Hall of Fame coaches and nationally recognized programs.

Well, it looks like that news has finally started to emerge.

On Friday morning, Yahoo published a lengthy piece after reviewing “hundreds of pages of documents from the years-long probe that had federal authorities monitoring multiple targets and intercepting more than 4,000 calls across 330 days.” This was the first look into the investigation since the FBI initially pursued its indictments.

Within the article, a litany of players and programs were mentioned, including programs like Alabama, Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Texas. It was a “who’s who” of college basketball and will raise a plethora of questions in the weeks to come.

The article also directly mentioned one current and two former Big Ten players. These were Michigan State’s Miles Bridges, Penn State’s DJ Newbill, and Maryland’s Diamond Stone. Bridges is, obviously, still playing with the Spartans, but the other two have both departed from their respective programs.

The referenced documents appear to indicate that Bridges’ mother accepted some type of benefits from Christian Dawkins, one of the individuals who was indicted by the FBI. Meanwhile, Newbill is referenced as receiving a $2,000 loan, and Stone is listed for having received $14,303.

At this point, it’s difficult to tell what this could mean for Bridges and these three Big Ten programs. While it’s unlikely that Maryland and Penn State’s current teams will be impacted by this news, Michigan State will now have to wonder about eligibility issues and/or if it could impact the team’s present season. That’s a difficult thing to address considering that the Big Ten Tournament starts next week.

Moreover, the obvious question now is whether there’s more to come, whether it’s in regard to these players or not. It seems unlikely that Yahoo would get access to these documents if there wasn’t more to come.

This is, obviously, speculation, but this feels like a coordinated leaking of information. The indictments, followed by the ESPN article, and now this. Who knows the reasoning behind the timing of these events, but it seems unlikely this will be the end of the story.

Either way, BTPowerhouse will keep you updated as this story develops further.