Ohio State has received four years of NCAA probation for violations committed by the women’s basketball, women’s golf and fencing programs.
The NCAA’s Division I Committee on Infractions announced Tuesday that Ohio State women’s basketball, women’s golf and fencing programs were all found guilty of committing NCAA violations between 2015 and 2019.
As punishment, Ohio State has been placed on four years of NCAA probation and fined $5,000 in addition to 3% of the fencing program budget and 1% of both the women’s basketball and women’s golf budgets. Under the terms of the probation, Ohio State will be required to “continue to develop and implement a comprehensive educational program on NCAA legislation to instruct coaches, the faculty athletics representative, all athletics department personnel and all institutional staff members with responsibility for recruiting” and file annual compliance reports to the NCAA indicating the progress made with that program.
Those penalties have been assessed in addition to self-imposed penalties by Ohio State that included postseason bans for all three programs for the 2020-21 academic year as well as vacating women’s basketball and fencing wins in which ineligible athletes participated and scholarship reductions for those two programs in 2020-21. The Division I Committee on Infractions also imposed an additional 10% in scholarship reductions for the Ohio State fencing program in 2022-23.
Vacated achievements include Big Ten championships in 2017 and 2018, the Big Ten Tournament championship in 2018 and a total of 52 wins for women’s basketball, and Midwest Fencing Conference championships in 2016, 2017 and 2018 as well as NCAA runner-up finishes in 2016 and 2017 and an NCAA third-place finish in 2018 for the fencing team.
While Ohio State had proposed that it should receive three years of NCAA probation for the violations, the NCAA opted for four years of probation “to appropriately address the scope, scale and severity of the violations.”
Because Ohio State previously had an NCAA infractions case involving the men’s swimming program in 2017, the NCAA also held a hearing to examine Ohio State’s compliance monitoring program. The NCAA concluded that a failure to monitor violation did not occur, though it did identify gaps in Ohio State’s compliance program that it has asked Ohio State to address.
The majority of violations found by the NCAA occurred within the fencing program. Former fencing coach Vladimir Nazlymov, who also received a 10-year show-cause penalty from the NCAA, was found to have “arranged, provided or directed other coaches to provide more than $6,000 in recruiting inducements to three prospects” and to have “personally provided or directed coaches to provide 18 student-athletes with more than $8,000 in impermissible benefits in the form of free access to his local sports club,” among other violations.
The women’s basketball program was punished as a result of violations committed by former associate head coach Patrick Klein, who also received a 10-year show-cause from the NCAA. Klein “initiated contact with student-athletes with the goal of forming personal relationships that exceeded coaching/student-athlete relationships” and “provided them with impermissible benefits, including paying for manicures, loaning money for rental cars, and purchasing textbooks for a student-athlete who was not on scholarship.”
The women’s golf program was found to have exceeded countable athletically related activity hours over the course of several years.
The full report issued by the NCAA on Tuesday can be read here.
In a news release issued by Ohio State on Tuesday, athletic director Gene Smith said he believes Ohio State handled the situation appropriately by self-imposing penalties and cooperating with the NCAA’s investigation.
“I’m proud of our university, athletics department, and the involved sport programs for our management of this matter,” Smith said in a statement. “We are committed to our proactive and pre-existing system of compliance methods and rules education. A comprehensive compliance program ensures adherence and institutional control over the athletics department and furthers the mission of the university. We are pleased that this matter is now behind us, and our focus remains on our student-athletes.”
Ohio State’s four years of probation begin immediately and will continue through April 18, 2026.
