Clemons mum after completing 60-day jail term

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Former Missouri basketball player Ricky Clemons on Sunday completed a 60-day jail sentence, walking tentatively to freedom but with an uncertain future as the NCAA investigates the Tigers.

Clemons, 23, declined to answer any questions as he left the Boone County Jail carrying two plastic grocery sacks filled with his possessions.

He got into a Jeep, its driver obscured by newspapers shoved against the tinted windows, and they sped away from the jail on the northeast edge of Columbia.

Clemons entered jail in July after a judge ruled he violated terms that had allowed him to stay in a halfway house, after he pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor charge of falsely imprisoning former girlfriend Jessica Bunge. She alleged Clemons choked her in a headlock in his Columbia apartment in January.

Missouri -- which had suspended the junior point guard for a year -- then booted Clemons from the team and revoked his athletic scholarship. He is no longer enrolled at Missouri.

Asked where he was heading, whether he wanted to play basketball again, whether he had any comment about Bunge's allegations that he received cash, clothes and improper academic help, Clemons stared straight ahead with a sucker in his mouth and remained silent.

Clemons must still serve two years of supervised probation for his second guilty plea, to a misdemeanor charge of third-degree domestic assault. This means he must stay in regular contact with a probation officer, said Tim Kniest, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections.

"Mr. Clemons has to call and get our permission to leave the state of Missouri for any purpose, and that has not happened, not yet," Kniest said Friday afternoon. "I expect he'll report in to his probation officer on Monday, like everyone else in a similar circumstance."

If Clemons wants to move to another state, permission must first be granted by that state to oversee his probation, Kniest added.

Clemons was arrested in January after Bunge alleged to police that he choked her, pulled her hair and wouldn't allow her to leave his apartment for more than an hour after she refused to watch the movie "Roots" with him. He was originally charged with a felony count of domestic abuse. But the charge was reduced to the two misdemeanors when he entered his guilty pleas.

In interviews with law enforcement and later in media interviews, Bunge asserted she had seen Clemons leave the Hearnes Center, where Missouri plays basketball, with large sums of cash. Coach Quin Snyder has denied that any of his athletes received cash.

Snyder has acknowledged, however, giving Clemons a couple of pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes he received as promotional gifts and planned to discard. The university has said that will probably be considered an infraction by the NCAA.

Bunge, 21, also alleged she saw Clemons receive improper academic help, including answers to tests. News reports have said Clemons accumulated some 24 credit hours in one semester last summer to qualify to play at Missouri.

Missouri officials have said they are cooperating with the NCAA investigation.

Meanwhile, in two newspaper interviews published Sunday, Bunge said she was disappointed to have received little sympathy or support and no apology from the university and its athletic department. She did not return messages left with relatives seeking comment Sunday about Clemons' release.

In depositions and prior media interviews, Bunge recounted other allegations of violence by Clemons, including a previous choking incident and once when he broke a bathroom door in anger at her Columbia residence.

"He really, really needs help," Bunge told The Kansas City Star.

In a separate interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bunge said she had "no idea" what would unfold when she decided to go to police after the January incident.

"But it ended up just exploding," she said.

The concern from the outset "was more about Ricky, and not me," Bunge, who now attends school in Chicago, told the Post-Dispatch. "From then on, I realized how it was going to be."

Cathy Scroggs, vice chancellor for student affairs at the Columbia campus, told the Post-Dispatch the university has various services for crime victims, but noted that Bunge was not enrolled at the time of the January incident.

Bunge said she talked briefly with a counselor from the university Women's Center whom she had met while a student, but was not allowed continued meetings with the counselor because she was not still enrolled.

"At the time that it happened, she wasn't a student so it was real hard for us to figure out how to assist her," Scroggs said.