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Former USF Basketball Player Shaun Noriega Accuses Former Head Coach Stan Heath, USF of Misconduct

Noriega held nothing back in his Twitter rant Friday afternoon.

NCAA Basketball Tournament - Ohio v  South Florida Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Former USF basketball guard Shaun Noriega accused former head coach Stan Heath and former athletic trainer and current Executive Deputy Director of Athletics and Chief Operating Officer Barry Clements, of misconduct during his time in Tampa.

Clements was the men’s basketball sports administrator during this period. Heath would report to Clements and Clements would report to the athletic director.

The thread from the former Bull began on Friday afternoon as people on Twitter, including ESPN’s Sarah Spain, were discussing Lavar Ball’s idea of starting his own basketball league for high school players who don’t want to go the college route.

Noriega claims in his series of tweets that:

  • He witnessed “systematic academic cheating and flake classes that were pushed on the players”
  • The players were overworked like “slaves” and that Heath would regularly go over NCAA practice and workout limits “with no regard for players health or future.”
  • After sustaining a stress fracture in his foot, Heath and Clements tried to force him to play knowing his foot had a stress fracture.
  • They denied paying for the surgery until he threatened litigation against them.
  • Heath told Noriega he was faking it and the school threatened to sue him for defamation if the player kept talking about it.
  • When he finally did have the surgery, he says the doctors wondered why he hadn’t gotten the surgery sooner.

These are all very explosive accusations against the university, Heath and Clements. And if true, they must be addressed accordingly.

To be noted, Noriega saw his playing time dip dramatically late in the 2011-2012 season, playing a combined 34 minutes in USF’s final eight games including the NCAA tournament.

Noriega played in eight games during the 2012-2013 season before the injury forced him to miss the rest of the season. He later transferred to UT-Pan American (now The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) as a grad transfer and suffered another stress fracture to the same foot in the same location.

His highlight at USF was going for 22 points against Villanova in the Big East tournament hitting six threes to help erase a 16-point deficit at halftime to knock off ‘Nova.

Noriega nor USF could be reached for comment.. because it’s Christmas Eve.

We will update the story with any further details.