RADFORD DISMISSES 2 PLAYERS

A Player's Father Says Marijuana Was The Reason Four RU Men's Basketball
Players Were Suspended Last Month

RADFORD - Two of the four Radford University basketball players who were
suspended on Feb. 4 for the balance of the season will not be returning to
the team.

The two dismissed players are freshman Branden Smith and junior walk-on Tom
Hayes, Radford coach Byron Samuels said Friday. Smith and Hayes, along with
juniors Whit Holcomb-Faye and Chris Goodin, were suspended after being
caught smoking marijuana at the team hotel when Radford was on a three-day
road trip to South Carolina, according to Roland Hayes, the father of Tom
Hayes. Radford had not revealed the reason for the suspensions.

Goodin and Holcomb-Faye are not assured of coming back to the team until
they complete what is deemed a satisfactory penance, Samuels indicated. He
did not elaborate.

Radford played the last eight games of the regular season and Tuesday's Big
South Conference tournament game without the four players. The Highlanders
were eliminated by Birmingham-Southern 69-40 on Tuesday to finish their
season 12-16.

Samuels declined to comment on the reason the players were suspended other
than to say that what they had done was a problem for teams around the country.

Both Goodin and Holcomb-Faye, the team's leading scorer the last two years,
have been previously suspended during the calendar year. Samuels declined
to call Goodin's hiatus from the team last summer a suspension.
Academically eligible by NCAA standards, Goodin was not meeting team
academic expectations and needed to be taught a lesson, Samuels said. After
that, Goodin's classroom performance improved, Samuels said.

Holcomb-Faye and senior Brandon Jeffers were suspended for a game Dec. 22
for "lack of leadership and behavior detrimental to the team," Samuels said
in a release at the time.

Two days after returning from South Carolina in February, Samuels met with
Hayes and the others. It was then he informed Hayes that he would not be back.

Roland Hayes and his former wife Susan Schwartz, Tom Hayes' mother,
questioned Samuels by e-mail asking why their son had been singled out when
he'd done nothing more than the other three.

"Here I'm paying Tom's tuition and expenses and these other players are on
scholarship yet Tom is held to a higher standard?" Roland Hayes said in an
interview. "I don't understand that concept. What it sounds like to me is
'Let's take some action here. We'll get rid of the kid who doesn't score.'"

"Being on the basketball team is a privilege and not a right," Samuels
said. "I get hundreds of requests from guys who want to try to walk on to
the team. I have no obligation to take any of them."

Furthermore, Samuels added, he didn't know of a coach in the country who
treated all his players exactly the same.

Responding to Roland Hayes in an e-mail released by the father, Samuels
wrote, "Tom put himself in this position, no one else."

Roland Hayes said that his son was very sorry about what he'd done.