Matt Allen and the Weaver brothers built Hillcrest on the pairing of Bagley (by offering the dad a job) and Ayton (by luring him from another program in SoCal). When I broke the story that Hillcrest was paired with an academic institution that wasn’t accredited (Starshine Academy), Bagley withdrew his kids from Starshine, kept them on the Hillcrest basketball team, and enrolled them in online classes- all while still taking a paycheck from Starshine/Hillcrest. When the NCAA ruled that those classes would not receive accreditation, he pulled his kids off the HC hoops team, and Allen and the Weavers begged him to reconsider because they thought losing Bagley meant losing Ayton. They worked all day to secure Ayton, and once they knew he was staying, they emailed Bagley a termination letter (citing that he had berated a Cronkite reporter a week earlier) and leaked the email to the press and other club coaches. When I called Bagley for a comment on his firing, he hadn’t even checked his email yet. He read his email that he had been fired aloud on the phone with me. He then forced the school to issue a retraction of the cause, and an apology on the threat that he had info that could bring extra hell to the program.
Cut to: Hillcrest keeps Ayton, enrolls him in online classes, gets him qualified, redeems their entire program with his commitment to Arizona, and Hillcrest uses that to lure top talent from all over the country despite a falling out amongst the Weaver brothers (one fired the other with the AD’s support).
If Sean Miller set up a $100,000 payment to DeAndre Ayton through an intermediary, you have to hope that Allen and the Weavers were unaware, because ASU is obviously in deep with three players on their current roster.
Cut to: Hillcrest keeps Ayton, enrolls him in online classes, gets him qualified, redeems their entire program with his commitment to Arizona, and Hillcrest uses that to lure top talent from all over the country despite a falling out amongst the Weaver brothers (one fired the other with the AD’s support).
If Sean Miller set up a $100,000 payment to DeAndre Ayton through an intermediary, you have to hope that Allen and the Weavers were unaware, because ASU is obviously in deep with three players on their current roster.
