Calhoun payed to scrimmage with an AAU squad of former college players, that squad was owned by the same people that ran Gay's squad, a few days later Gay commits to UConn. It was legal at the time, but I think the NCAA closed the loophole after Gay's recruitment. That is my basic remembrance. Maryland fans were all in a tizzy at the time, but then they always are.
Actually, Calhoun didn't pay the AAU squad. The AAU squad was Rudy Gay's squad coached by Anthony Lewis. UConn couldn't play such a team. But they did pay to play the Baltimore Ballers, which was a team put together by Lewis specifically for that game. Lewis ran, and Gay played for, the Cecil Kirk AAU. The Ballers were not part of that, even though Lewis put them together for the game. They were under the umbrella of Baltimore Parks & Rec. UConn sent a check in the amount of $20k or $25k to the City of Baltimore Parks and Recreation Center.
Years later, Gary Williams insinuated that UConn had paid off Gay to go there. Eric Prisbell, the guy who ran Terrapin Times, asked him about Gay, and Williams said that Gay professed to be a Terp fan, why didn't he come here? He then said it was likely something more than the Ballers game.
This was his own attempt to cover his own butt since he only started recruiting Gay the summer before his senior year, whereas Calhoun had offered Gay as a sophomore since Calhoun has long been friends with Lewis since recruiting Reggie Lewis (no relation) to Northeastern. Gary Williams blew it and so he blamed his own failure on implied payoffs. Tom Moore was totally up front about what UConn did and he explained it in the newspapers. It wasn't the first time UConn had paid a team for a scrimmage in the recruitment of a player. UConn did it with a Louisiana team for Brandon Bass as well (obviously Bass never came).
Williams is even more hypocritical when you consider that Calhoun was a relative outsider to the AAU game, rarely landing AAU stars. Even kids like Ben Gordon didn't play AAU back then, and were hurt in the rankings for sitting out the summer. Meanwhile, Gary Williams was cited as being one of the guys who comped Final 4 tickets to the Pump Brothers who ran an AAU team out of Cali. Those tix were worth thousands of dollars. The NCAA put a stop to this practice, but the Pumps have done multiple end-arounds by hiring people like ex-NCAA head Cedric Dempsey to run a hiring consulting service, and now they sell a so-called monthly newsletter to schools with a $10k a year subscription service.
Remember when Maryland beat out UConn for Nik Caner-Medley? A New England product? UConn finished second. Caner-Medley was a Pump Brother kid. So, in Gary Williams' warped mind, it's ok to give money to the Pump Brothers to "pump" their pockets, but wrong to give money to Baltimore Parks & Rec. (which serves mostly children) because they are not consumate insiders with ties to the NCAA ex-President.
