Following NCAA allegations regarding practicing out of
season, the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) athletic department
announced Thursday, Jan. 5, that men’s basketball head coach Bob Semling would
be suspended for the final 13 games of the season and the team would be
ineligible for the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC)
Tournament and the NCAA Tournament this season.

The NCAA made allegations of four violations related to the
Pointer men’s basketball team practicing before the Division III official start
date Oct. 15, between the 2011-12 and 2015-16 academic years.

UWSP self-imposed the sanctions, while associate head coach
Kent Dernbach, a native of Almond, was named the interim head coach for the
men’s basketball team for the rest of the season

“As an institution, we feel that it is imperative to take
swift and immediate action in response to what we have been informed by the
NCAA are major allegations regarding our men’s basketball program,” said
first-year UWSP director of athletics Brad Duckworth. “Initially we thought
these were secondary violations, but we have been informed of four major
violations.”

“I hope people don’t get too carried away with this,” said
Sean McGann, a senior on last season’s team and a member of the Pointers’ 2015
National Championship team. “So many different people are saying all of these
different things, where they’re not necessarily true.

“And it’s hard when the full truth isn’t quite out there,”
he said.

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