ORONO – Seven members of the University of Maine men’s and women’s basketball teams will serve multiple-game suspensions, most of them during the next two weeks, after committing secondary violations of NCAA rules.

The infractions involved the misuse of the players’ appropriated book allowances, which constituted a violation of NCAA extra-benefit rules, the university revealed Wednesday.

The Black Bear men’s team, coached by John Giannini, will be most significantly affected. Five team members, including three starters, will serve suspensions.

Starting senior forward Rickey White of Topsham and starting senior center Justin Rowe have been hit with five-game suspensions, or 20 percent of the 2002-03 regular season. Three others, starting senior forward Clayton Brown, junior forward Mark Flavin and junior transfer Ludmil “Udo” Hadjisotirov, have been penalized three games, or 10 percent of the season.

Coach Sharon Versyp’s women’s squad will be without junior forward Heather Ernest of Temple and injured senior guard Pam Cruz. Both will serve three-game suspensions.

“We take any violation of NCAA rules seriously and, at the same time, there are infractions that are going to occur because some people do not fully understand all the rules,” said Paul Bubb, UMaine interim athletic director.

NCAA rule 15.2.3 states: “A member institution may provide a student-athlete financial aid that covers the actual cost of required course-related books.” The UMaine student-athletes apparently procured some textbooks for friends with those funds.

“We have to do a better job of making certain our student-athletes know what is acceptable and what is not,” said Bubb, who would not confirm details of the violations.

The violations were self-reported by UMaine to the America East conference and to the NCAA.

NCAA penalty guidelines for this type of infraction call for a suspension of 10 percent, 20 percent or 30 percent of a player’s regular-season contests, depending on the severity. Bubb said a 20 percent penalty is tied to an “extra benefit” with a dollar value of $300 to $500, while the 10 percent penalty is used for extra benefits of $100 to $300.

“I’m extremely disappointed, as are the players who were not involved and the rest of our coaches,” Giannini said. “There were some poor decisions made and it makes things all the more challenging for us, especially since it involves all frontcourt players.”

The suspensions take effect immediately, with the exceptions of Hadjisotirov and Cruz.

Hadjisotirov, a transfer from Boston College, will begin serving his suspension starting with the Dec. 21 game against Husson College, the first game he would have been eligible to play. Cruz, who has been rehabilitating a knee injury, will serve her suspension once she is medically cleared to play.

“I wish with all my heart we were not in this situation,” Giannini said. “I guess if we have to go through this, it may be better to have it happen early in the season, deal with it, see how we respond, and go from there.”

“It will be a very challenging short-term period, but at least it won’t be a drawn-out situation,” he added.

Players are allowed to be on the team bench, but not in uniform, during the suspension period.

“I was very disappointed, very upset,” Versyp said. “We’ll pull together. I’m not focusing on a person, I’m focusing on our team.”

The NCAA defines a secondary infraction as “one that is isolated or inadvertent in nature, provides or is intended to provide only a minimal recruiting, competitive or other advantage and does not include any significant recruiting inducement or extra benefit.”

Giannini said the textbook violations, along with those involving phone privileges or phone cards for student-athletes, are the two most common secondary NCAA violations involving extra scholarship benefits.

The self-reported violations are the first publicized by UMaine since former volleyball player Leah Voss was withheld from two America East matches by the university and subsequently reinstated by the NCAA last October after having competed in a Brewer recreation league match.

The five-game suspensions represent a calendar stretch of only 12 days for the UMaine men, but the situation will test the Bears’ ingenuity.

“We don’t quite have to go back the drawing board, but we’re down to seven scholarship players and it forces us to move people into unfamiliar positions,” Giannini said. “It’s like a family because we spend so much time together and count on each other. When one of us comes up short, it disappoints everyone, but at the same time you don’t want to abandon them unless they cross a certain line.”

For the women, Ernest’s suspension will involve Friday night’s season opener at Dartmouth and both games of next week’s Dead River Co. Classic.

“Julie [Veilleux] and Monica [Peterson] will be playing some at the four [power forward], plus we have Abby [Schrader] and Nicole [Jay] and Andrea [Gay],” Versyp said. “You deal with it. You make a mistake and now we’ve got to move on.”

In 1994, UMaine became the focus of an NCAA major violations case. The NCAA discovered violations of NCAA rules related to extra benefits, recruiting, eligibility for competition, financial aid, personnel, cooperative principles and lack of institutional control.

Ultimately, penalties imposed by the NCAA and the university itself included four years’ probation, banning the men’s ice hockey team from NCAA tournament play, and cutting scholarships in men’s hockey, football and men’s basketball.

As part of the process, UMaine went through an extensive review and restructuring of its NCAA compliance procedures.