School probes player’s status

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Feb. 11, 2002 | 10:50 a.m.

UNLV may have a better idea as early as today about whether senior star forward Linda Frohlich can resume her basketball career with the school.

The 6-foot-2 Frohlich, the school's all-time leading scorer and the object of an All-America campaign by the school, and 6-6 sophomore teammate Petra Glaser were suspended on Friday afternoon after concerns about their eligibility were brought up by NCAA officials.

Glaser has been ruled ineligible for eight games for competing on a team that had players considered professionals by current NCAA rules. She will be allowed to rejoin the Lady Rebels if they get to the final game of the Mountain West tournament. She also will be eligible to complete the final two years of her college eligibility at UNLV.

Frohlich's status is yet to be determined. School officials are looking into payments she received while playing for the German National team.

"There's some question whether all her expenses came from the (German) National Federation," UNLV athletic director John Robinson said. "There was some question about where one of her checks came from. We're in the process of trying to find out whether it was a legitimate expense or not."

Robinson said the school hoped to have its investigation involving Frohlich done by today.

Robinson said the school was first made aware of possible NCAA violations on Thursday. The school then began an investigation into the matter and determined that Glaser had competed on a team in Germany before enrolling at UNLV in 2000 that "under current NCAA definition was a professional team."

Glaser never received compensation for playing on the team and never signed a contract or had an agent.

Robinson called the inquiry "frustrating and unfortunate."

"However, given the NCAA mandate regarding amatuerism, UNLV is compelled to abide by the regulations in place ... and to fully look into (Frohlich's) situation," he said.

The suspensions of Frohlich and Glaser are believed to be the first of Division I foreign-born women's basketball players this season. They come after the NCAA mandated a sweeping investigation of 340 foreign-born men's basketball players on Division I rosters from last season.

Bill Saum, the NCAA's director of agent, gambling and amatuerism issues --he's the fellow who was lobbying to have college sports wagering banned in Las Vegas last year -- spent last spring in Europe researching club team basketball. Saum then came back and put out guidelines for schools.

The NCAA wanted to find out which players may have been paid to play for club teams in Europe or have played on teams with professional players, a violation of NCAA rules.

Jane Jankowski, an NCAA spokeswoman, said that letters were originally sent to 52 Division I schools last summer concerning the eligibility of 62 male basketball players who may have violated some of the NCAA's amatuer eligibility rules.

"Among the things we are looking into are things like playing with professional players, playing in a professional league and matters of compensation," Jankowski said. "We have done a lot of research last spring and summer on foreign leagues. We post a lot of that information up on our website about how those leagues operate. Now our enforcement staff is beginning to focus on more of those cases."

Jankowski said the NCAA sent out 35 more letters "recently" to Division I schools concerning eligibility issues for both men and women athletes.

"We've identified some situations where eligibility issues may exist," she said. "Now we're asking those institutions to look into those situations."

A number of men's college teams have had to make do without key players this year because it was determined they had either been paid or played with European professionals.

Even without Frohlich and Glaser, the Lady Rebels upped their record to 18-4 overall and 6-3 in Mountain West Conference play with a 57-49 victory at San Diego State (9-12, 1-7) on Saturday night. Junior guard Constance Jinks scored 27 points in the win.

"Under the circumstances, it may have been our biggest win of the year," UNLV head coach Regina Miller said. "The team really rallied around not having Linda and Petra."