On Bledsoe story, it isn’t Pete Thamel this time

Eric Bledsoe

It’s not Pete Thamel, this time.

It’s the Birmingham News’ Jon Solomon, who reports this morning that conflicting grades on Eric Bledsoe’s transcript calls into question whether the ex-Kentucky guard should have been eligible to play college basketball in the first place.

This isn’t the report from the Birmingham Schools Investigation. That has yet to be released, though it was reported last week that the report could be coming soon.
Instead, this appears to be independent reporting by Solomon.
The crux of the story comes here:

Bledsoe’s four-year transcript shows he made an A in Algebra 3 in night school as a senior by receiving a 90 during each of the two sessions. However, a grade report from those night sessions showed Bledsoe was recorded as making a C average, with a low C recorded in the first session and a low B recorded in the second.

And here:

In a telephone conversation with The Birmingham News, the Algebra 3 teacher, Larry Webster, said the final course grade recorded on the night-school grade report is wrong. “You’ve got the wrong grade. There are two of those printout sheets. I already talked to the (school) board attorney.” He said he wouldn’t comment further and hung up.

Of course, Thamel and the New York Times first reported on possible problems with Bledsoe’s grades back in May.
Since the Algebra 3 teacher said he did speak to the (school) board’s attorney, the Birmingham Schools report will apparently deal with the discrepancy in grades. And just because the NCAA Eligibility Center cleared Bledsoe to play at UK doesn’t mean the NCAA could not retroactively declare that the Birmingham native was ineligible to play at Kentucky. If that’s the case, well, we’ll just have to wait on the report.