New men's basketball coach Glen Miller hasn't seen his team play a single game yet, but his program has already been hit with a series of unfortunate setbacks that could leave him shorthanded when the season begins.
First came the news in late July that Brown's Keenan Jeppesen - hoping to follow his old coach to Penn after leading the Bears in scoring last year - was denied consideration by Penn admissions.
Then the Quakers took another, more immediate hit when they learned that guard David Whitehurst had been dismissed from Penn for academic reasons.
Whitehurst was a major contributor on last year's Ivy League championship squad that went 20-9, starting 21 of 29 games and averaging 26.4 minutes per game. Against Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the sophomore drained three triples on his way to a 15-point effort that kept Penn close to the nation's No. 1 team in the second half.
As one of four returning starters, Whitehurst projected to be a key figure on Miller's inaugural Quakers team.
But now it looks like Fran Dunphy's successor will have just three of last year's starting five at his disposal.
When The Summer Pennsylvanian reported on Whitehurst's academic dismissal July 27, weeks of speculation as to the guard's status with the University were put to rest. The athletic department made no announcement, however, when Whitehurst was dropped from the 2006 roster, nor have any of the circumstances surrounding his academic situation been disclosed.
A spokesman only said that "we would never comment on a student-athlete's academic status."
Speaking generally about matters of academic probation and dismissal, Assistant College of Arts and Sciences Dean Gary Purpura said over the summer that a student could go directly from good standing to being taken off the rolls by receiving poor grades one semester.
A student already on academic probation for a GPA of less than 2.0 in any semester could also face immediate dismissal for finishing another semester below that mark.
Purpura noted in general that dropping a student from the rolls "is really reserved for extreme cases" and that "it doesn't happen very frequently."
A student who has faced these consequences must wait one calendar year before applying for reinstatement. The student must submit a letter describing the circumstances of the dismissal, what he has been doing while away from the University and his plans for the remainder of his academic career.
The Committee on Undergraduate Academic Standing, to whom the application is submitted, is looking for "anything that shows that [the student] is making strides to turn things around," Purpura said.
It is not clear whether Whitehurst will apply for reinstatement. He was not available for comment.
Meanwhile, on the court, the loss of an established contributor will force Miller to audition new players for the part. Among the leading contenders are Tommy McMahon, a freshman last year who logged considerable minutes before succumbing to a season-ending back injury, and Kevin Egee, a classmate of McMahon's who played mostly a garbage-time role in 14 games last year.
The Quakers might also get a boost from Mike Kach, a junior who could return to the team this year after leaving it halfway through his freshman season.
It looked like the Red and Blue would get a reprieve in a big way, at least a year down the road, when word was made public that Ivy Player of the Year candidate Keenan Jeppesen might follow Miller and transfer to Penn from Brown. The deal looked all but sealed when Brown coach Craig Robinson told The Brown Daily Herald that Jeppesen had seemed "pretty resigned to leaving" when he had talked to him.
However, the University admissions office decided not to consider Jeppesen's application for transfer under the premise that it was submitted after deadline.
"We have [accepted late applications] in the past," Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Stetson said, "but the Ivy League's been trying to be more conscious of deadlines."
But the decision ran deeper than that, with Stetson admitting that Penn-Brown relations factored in.
"We feel badly about taking students from Brown, a member of our league," he said. "He made his choice, and Brown is his place, just like we would not want to have students taken out from underneath of our program at Penn."
