Former Kansas Basketball Star Facing Serious Criminal Charge
SAN ANTONIO, TX - MARCH 31: Silvio De Sousa #22 of the Kansas Jayhawks reacts after being defeated by the Villanova Wildcats during the 2018 NCAA Men's Final Four Semifinal at the Alamodome on March 31, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas. Villanova defeated Kansas 95-79. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
The saga of now-former Kansas basketball player Silvio De Sousa took another strange turn this week with the revelation of a serious criminal charge levied against him.
According to the Lawrence Journal-World, the 22-year-old center is set to be charged with aggravated battery. In Douglas County District Court, that is "a level-5 or mid-level-severity felony."
"The charging document, filed Monday, alleges that De Sousa 'unlawfully, feloniously and recklessly cause(d) great bodily harm or disfigurement to another person,'" the Journal-World reported. "The alleged incident was reported to Lawrence police as a battery at 2:36 a.m. Jan. 1 in the 1100 block of Massachusetts, department records show."
This report comes just days after De Sousa announced his departure from the team for "personal reasons," according to KUSports. It looks like we may know what one of those reasons was.
Silvio De Sousa has been a controversial figure in college basketball for a while now. He was a basketball prodigy as a youth player, staring at the prestigious IMG Academy in Florida and winning gold medals at the FIBA Africa U-16 and U-18 Championship tournaments.
De Sousa committed to Kansas basketball in 2017, giving the team one of the top center prospects in the nation.
As a freshman for the Jayhawks, De Sousa appeared in 20 games and averaged less than nine minutes per game, after joining the team at midseason. He would have seen a much bigger role as a sophomore were it not for the fallout of the college basketball corruption scandal.
Allegations that De Sousa's guardian had taken money from a Maryland booster led to an NCAA investigation. Kansas held him out of games until the NCAA announced that he was ineligible for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.
De Sousa appealed the decision and the NCAA ultimately allowed him to play in the 2019-20 season.
Now that his college career appears to be done, it's hard to predict where he goes from here.
