after 11th grade he went back to Australia and he didn't really ever graduate from HS yet took classes and played ball at a college then went to prep school in the US. He never really graduated yet went to a quasi college for a while in australia. It really isn't cut and dry. And none of the rules really address his situation.I believe the concern is about the NCAA "Delayed Enrollment" rule.
The general rule for D-I is that once you enroll full-time at "any college" your 4 year eligibility clock has started, providing you 5 years to use those 4. There are special exceptions that pause the clock, but those aren't applicable for Malou as far as I know.
A bit of a loophole that the NCAA attempts to close is what they consider delayed enrollment. From how I used to understand it (could have changed since 2014 and the rule itself is fairly vague with subjectivity), individuals were given 1 year grace period to enroll full-time at a collegiate institution, after that your clock starts. To make matters worse, the NCAA has been known to hit kids on this if, during that 1 year delay, the kid is playing organized sports they consider that as part of your eligibility.
I don't know all the details on Malou and when he actually graduated high school, but thought I would share my understanding of the issue at hand.
From tribune article last fall:
Malou finished out the school year at St. Thomas More and played some AAU with the Connecticut Basketball Club before returning home to Australia.
It was there, while attempting a dunk, Malou suffered a knee injury and was sidelined for months. Malou said he had planned to return to St. Thomas More that fall, but ultimately did not.
“I actually lost contact with coach Ed Smith,” he said. “We just went our own ways.”
Smith, a polarizing figure in basketball circles, has brought, as a guardian, a number of young Sudanese-Australians to the U.S. to play basketball. He is now the legal guardian of Thon Maker, a top-10 2016 prospect.
“He saw the potential in me more than anybody else,” Malou said. “I don’t know what his intentions were. I hope they were good.”
So Malou stayed at home, bouncing between Box Hill Senior Secondary College and Australian College Basketball, he said, until 2012 when he received an offer to join an upstart prep program in central Iowa.
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- See more at: http://m.amestrib.com/sports/men-s-...overcoming-life-hardship#sthash.bqOQmVii.dpuf
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