NC State 5 star center, Omer Yurtseven is still awaiting the ruling from the NCAA on whether he’ll be eligible this season after coming overseas from Turkey. The NCAA is looking into his amateur status, leaving the Pack in frustrating position. NBC Sports has a nice piece on the situation. Here are some of the highlights…
Yurtseven on the situation:
“I can’t control it so I’m trying not to think about it, Just think about education and basketball, to control as I said what you can. Because that’s not in your hands, so if you think about it more, all It’s going to get you is frustration. And I don’t want that.”
Gottfried on the situation:
“It’s not frustrating because quite honestly for us, there’s really not a whole lot we can do about that. He’s participated in every workout. He’s integrating himself with our team in a really positive way.”
“We’re approaching it with the hope he won’t have to miss any games and move right in and play. If he does (have to sit out games), we’ll deal with that, too.”
Abu on Yurtseven:
“He played overseas and he grew up playing the game the right way, so he’s very skilled and has a super high IQ.”
The Takeaway:
To us it seems like classic NCAA. They will likely have an answer right before the season begins if they continue with the pattern we’ve witnessed elsewhere with eligibility situations.
That being said, from the tone of Gottfried and Yurtseven, it seemed like they are feeling pretty positive. Yurt also said he heard they ‘apparently knew what the ruling would be, but wouldn’t announce it yet.” What that means, we are not sure. Who told him that, we are not sure there either. If that ends up being true then it’s a positive in our opinion. It likely would mean that they think he’s fine but they are going through protocol before clearing him. That’s just our feeling on the situation and really does not have any facts behind it, however following the situation we just don’t see a reason (that is being made public) that Yurt should miss any of the regular season.
I bet if he was going to UNC he would have been cleared 30 minutes after accepting the offer. When is the NCAA going to act on UNC? This is ridiculous.