I corrected the language later. The coaching staff encouraged Kwintin to leave voluntarily which would have opened a scholarship for Akok. Kwintin reflected on this for a while, as we saw in Kwintin's now-deleted Instagram statements about leaving and having received frank feedback on his basketball future. In the end, Kwintin decided to stay and keep his scholarship. So he's at UConn and on scholarship. However, around the start of the semester, Kwintin was suspended from team activities, as has been reported in the media. None of this is controversial.
People, I guess, read "asked" as implying "demanded" rather than "encouraged", and the statement that Kwintin's suspension followed his decision to stay as implying that one event was on account of the other. I agree that there's no evidence for those propositions, and I hadn't intended to imply those things; that's why I corrected the wording in a later post.
I think people are getting a little too worked up over these thoughts. The same people who say "scholarships will open up" if a 5* player like Precious Achiuwa wants to come here, don't want to acknowledge the frank discussions between coach and player that lead to scholarships opening up. In this case, it appears the staff tried to open up a scholarship mid-year for Akok, and failed. They were undoubtedly handicapped by a lack of better options for Kwintin as far as basketball-related jobs. He had a right to his scholarship, and without something better on the table than an all-expense-paid semester at UConn, he had no motive to leave.
