One Small Change Goes a Long Way After a Corruption Scandal

Tyler Boston has several strikes against him. For one, he’s a 5-foot-10 high school senior without the size to be easily noticed by college recruiters. For another, college basketball coaches can afford to be picky with high school players because the transfer portal is brimming with older players who have an extra pandemic year of eligibility.

Moreover, when Boston travels to high-profile recruiting showcases in Atlanta and Las Vegas next month, it’s unclear whether he will be able to highlight the breadth of his skills to college coaches as he’ll be competing for playing time on a talented travel team.

Fortunately for Boston, he had another stage the last two weekends — playing with his high school team, Bullis of Potomac, Md., against some of the best private schools in the basketball hotbed known as the DMV (shorthand for the Washington area: the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia).

The DMV Live event was among the roughly 50 N.C.A.A.-certified events around the country in which college coaches were permitted to make in-person evaluations of players with their high school teams. The events ranged from the June Jam in Appleton, Wis., to Arizona’s mammoth Section 7 tournament, in which a dozen courts were laid out in a domed N.F.L. stadium, to the New York City Public Schools Athletic League Showcase in Brooklyn.

Over the last two weekends, Boston displayed his proficiency running a team, knocking down 3-pointers (he made half of his 26 attempts) and defending with purpose. He had no scholarship offers a little more than a week ago, but now his phone is buzzing.

Holy Cross offered a scholarship. Then East Tennessee State, Fordham and Fairfield.

A week later, the University of Pennsylvania said it had a spot for him. As did Robert Morris, Merrimack, Delaware State and Mount St. Mary’s.

“When they call you, it’s great news,” said Boston, who since ninth grade has commuted 50 minutes to school from his home in the Baltimore suburbs with the hope of playing in college. “I had interest before, but no offers. It means hard work is paying off. I spent a lot of time in the gym, and I’m thankful that things have come to promise.”

Events like DMV Live, open to high school teams during in-person recruiting windows, are among the few enduring byproducts of the N.C.A.A. reforms that were promised in the wake of the F.B.I.’s corruption investigation that rocked the college basketball world nearly six years ago.

A commission, headed by the former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, called for some eye-catching changes, like creating a new process for N.C.A.A. investigations, sharper penalties for rule-breaking coaches and postseason bans for up to five years, as well as making college freshmen ineligible if the N.B.A. continued to bar players from jumping straight from high school to the pro league. Only a handful of the ideas have been implemented, and even fewer have stuck.

A reminder of how it’s going arrived last…