LaceDarius Dunn Whitewash?

The LaceDarius Dunn story, which I spoke about yesterday, has started getting bizarre. Even as I was typing that post, rumors were already spreading that Dunn's girlfriend was backing off her story. While the original story was that Dunn punched her during an argument and broke her jaw, she began saying that actually it was all an accident. And now today, she's claiming her jaw wasn't even broken.

Obviously a girl like this is under extraordinary pressure to back off her story. She's being told by all of her friends that LaceDarius Dunn is the biggest star at Baylor, and she'll tank their season if she gets him kicked off the team. So she wouldn't be the first girlfriend to claim after the fact that actually she'd accidentally tripped or banged into a wall. But to claim the jaw isn't even broken?? Seeing as how the incident happened just two days ago, you'd think that a doctor could determine pretty quickly if she's lying about that or not. So either she's an idiot, or the police monumentally screwed this one up.

Scott Drew is punting on the story for now, saying that he's not going to take a stand on the issue until it's been resolved by police. And obviously that's the only stance he can take. And he's got time to figure this out, because La Salle (a team I'm projecting to finish near the bottom of the Atlantic Ten) is the only team that has even a remote chance of knocking off Baylor before December. So they've got a full two months to resolve this without it affecting their season too much.

But Baylor needs to be really careful here. It's easy to forget just how little time has taken place since the Patrick Dennehy scandal. Dennehy was murdered by a former teammate back in 2003, but it was some time before the depth of the scandal became clear, with Baylor head coach Dave Bliss paying players, looking the other way at rampant drug use, and then urging his players to cover up for his misdeeds by lying to investigators about the dead Dennehy, accusing him of being a drug dealer. Even though the worst of the team's punishment by the NCAA took place during the 2005-06 season, Scott Drew got them back to the NCAA Tournament by 2008, and just two years later it already seems like the Dennehy scandal happened eons ago.

That can change. The last thing Baylor needs this season is controversy about bringing back Dunn too soon, leading to stories relating this team to the Dave Bliss era. Scott Drew should understand this, which is why Baylor fans shouldn't be too excited by some on the internet speculating that Dunn won't miss any playing time at all. Drew will be very cautious about bringing Dunn back, if he's even allowed back at all.