EUGENE — Oregon’s athletic department was placed on probation for two years by the NCAA after a panel announced penalties for several infractions involving women’s basketball, men’s basketball coach Dana Altman, and academic misconduct involving a track athlete.

Among the findings, the Division I Committee on Infractions panel ruled that Ducks women’s coach Kelly Graves failed to monitor and promote an atmosphere of compliance in his program and that Altman failed to monitor his director of basketball operations.

Oregon released a statement saying that while the university “respects the hearings panel’s findings and associated sanctions, the UO disagrees with its conclusions” and is considering an appeal.

“The institution believes there was no academic misconduct in the UO’s track and field program and that the decision of the hearings panel is unreasonable and inconsistent with conclusions reached by the NCAA in similar situations,” the university’s statement read. “For that reason, the university is evaluating the sanctions relative to this finding. The institution has 15 days to decide whether to file an appeal. While the university acknowledges rule violations in its men’s and women’s basketball programs, these violations do not rise to the level of a finding that UO head coaches failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance under NCAA bylaws and these conclusions. The UO is inclined to abide by the findings and sanctions outlined by the NCAA in the two basketball cases but intends to further evaluate the NCAA rulings before making a final decision regarding appeal.”

Graves must serve a two-game suspension during this season, the women’s basketball program must reduce the number of countable coaches by one for 10 hours during this season, the men’s basketball program must reduce the number of countable coaches by one for five hours during this season and Oregon must pay a fine of $5,000 plus one percent of each of the men’s and women’s basketball budgets.

Eleanor Myers, chief hearing officer for the panel and law professor at Temple, said that because Graves “actually participated in a violation and acknowledged that” to the Committee on Infractions, the panel “thought it warranted more of a penalty” than Altman.

The case also included academic misconduct by an adjunct instructor who changed a grade for a women’s track and field athlete from an F to a B-minus, which allowed her to maintain eligibility and earn her degree. Oregon must vacate any track and field records during which the former sprinter, Jasmine Todd, participated while academically ineligible.

Additionally, men’s basketball director of operations Josh Jamieson, who impermissibly participated in and observed voluntary workouts “at least 64 times,” according to the NCAA, has a two-year show-cause requiring him to attend the 2019 and 2020 NCAA rules seminars. Jamieson described his involvement in the voluntary workouts as a “very poor lapse in judgment,” according to the NCAA, and explained he wanted to help incoming freshmen transition to college life and give them the workout time they desired. After learning of the activity, Altman imposed disciplinary measures, including a one-month suspension for Jamieson and restricted him from attending practices for another month. Jamieson also acted as a referee during practices, which he and Altman believed was approved but later determined was impermissible and self-reported.

In the women’s basketball program, the assistant strength and conditioning coach impermissibly participated in on-court activities both during and after practices, including stepping into drills at Graves’ request, which caused the program to exceed the number of allowable coaches.

Graves, who acknowledged he knew it was impermissible for the assistant strength coach to participate, explained during the committee’s infractions hearing that the on-court activities started with a lapse of judgment and then became more frequent. The panel noted that Graves took full responsibility for the assistant strength coach’s actions during the hearing, but found that he “failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance and failed to monitor his staff and his disregard for the rules about impermissible coaching activity did not set the proper tone for compliance in the program.”

It’s not immediately clear when Graves will serve the two-game suspension. Graves told The Oregonian/Oregon Live he is “still evaluating with the school and my attorneys what course of action we will take.”

The No. 3 Ducks have a two-game road trip to Michigan State and South Dakota State on Sunday and Wednesday, respectively, before returning home to host No. 6 Mississippi State. Oregon then hosts the first of back-to-back games with Air Force and UC Irvine on Dec. 20-21.

Asked why the NCAA is still legislating and imposing penalties as to staff sizes at all, particularly in light of the accusations made in the three federal cases involving corruption in college basketball, Myers said the organization is “guided by our rules," which are supported to its member institutions.

“My understanding is that the coaching limitations are important to the membership, in particularly to the coaches,” she said. “That there is tremendous resource differential among our programs and when people have the opportunity to afford extra coaches it gives them a significant competitive advantage. The NCAA rules are based on that idea of fair competition. I think this is really at the heart of what we’re doing.”

In the track and field situation, an instructor originally offered to change an athlete’s grade to incomplete on the condition she complete the course when he taught it again over the summer, but when he attempted to do that the online grading system would not allow the grade to be changed to incomplete. The athlete then told the instructor an F would impact her ability to compete and she needed at least a D-minus and the instructor agreed to change the grade to a B-minus to reflect the work she had completed to date, much of which was submitted after the course was over. He then agreed to update the grade with the grade she earned after completing all the coursework during the summer term.

When the university discovered the grade change, the instructor, who was not familiar with NCAA rules, told the university he would have made the same accommodation for any other student, regardless of whether they were an athlete. The university determined that the grade change violated its grading policy, reinstated the original grade and rescinded the athlete’s degree. However, the university’s senior vice provost for academic affairs determined while the grading policy was violated, the athlete did not violate the university’s academic misconduct policy.

The NCAA enforcement staff alleged the university violated NCAA academic misconduct rules and the university disagreed. The interpretation NCAA staff and committees said it was academic misconduct because the university determined the activity violated its grading policy, the activity resulted in the falsification of an athlete’s transcript and the grade was used to establish eligibility to compete.

Lastly, Oregon’s football program gained a recruiting advantage, according to the NCAA, when it impermissibly displayed personalized statistics of visiting recruits during unofficial and official visits on an electronic board in the football facility during the fall of 2016. Oregon’s compliance department approved the display, but was later contacted by the Pac-12 and self-reported the violation.

“The University of Oregon’s athletic program is committed to integrity, the highest ethical standards and compliance with NCAA bylaws,” Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens said in a statement. “In all of these cases, our compliance monitoring program identified the issues and they were self-reported to the NCAA. As we noted several months ago, we have addressed the matters with the responsible employees and enhanced compliance training within the department. These cases do not merit the level of charges or sanctions issued by the NCAA.”

The findings by the Committee on Infractions ends a process that dated back nearly a year, when the NCAA sent a Notice of Allegations regarding the Level II rules violations.

The infractions, which were initially self-reported by Oregon to the NCAA, ranged from 2013 to May 2017.

Though Oregon was among the schools mentioned during the federal criminal trial of Adidas executive Jim Gatto earlier this fall due to its recruitment of Brian Bowen Jr., Myers said there was “no reference to any of the information in the ongoing federal investigation” during the Committee on Infractions' work into the school’s self-reported violations in this case.

Lawyers for the defendants claimed the Ducks basketball program offered an “astronomical” sum to the Bowen family and a lawyer later questioned Bowen’s father about an allegation that he received $3,000 from Stubblefield. The lawyers never offered evidence to support their claims and Bowen Sr. testified he couldn’t remember any payments from Oregon.

Altman and assistant coach Tony Stubblefield denied offering any payments to land Bowen Jr. during his recruitment in the spring of 2017, according to documents from an internal university investigation.

“This case was begun before the revelations in the federal case," Myers said. "We processed it as quickly as we could. The schools generally urge us to process things expeditiously.”