Former University of Kentucky standout Melvin Turpin was found this week in his home dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The coroner's report confirmed that Turner committed suicide but released no further details.

Turpin was a star for the Kentucky basketball team from 1980 to 1984. The team was heavily favored to win the national championship in 1984, but had it taken in an upset by Georgetown University and Patrick Ewing. The 6-foot-11 Turpin led the team to three straight SEC titles. He also holds the record for the most field goals made in SEC tournament play.

Turpin spent five seasons in the NBA but never turned out to be as good as the rest of the graduating class in the 1984 draft, in which he was the sixth pick behind future greats like Akeem Olajuwan, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley.

Many are wondering what led Turpin to commit suicide. I was born and raised in Kentucky and went to school at the University of Kentucky. I remember Turpin being a star when I was growing up, but I never met him. Some wonder if he, like some other professional athletes, had trouble adjusting to life after the NBA, when the cheering has stopped and you're no longer the hero you once were. Turpin was a security guard when he died, and his longtime friend, former Kentucky star Dirk Minniefield, said that he felt it difficult to return to his hometown as a regular working guy when others expected him to have a life of riches and NBA fame.

"As an athlete you feel like you have to tell people about a job that they think is below you. Turp would say, 'Why do I feel like I have to explain parts of my life that you feel are unacceptable to you?' That's how it would come across," said Minniefield.

What's saddest about the death of Melvin Turpin is that it leaves me to wonder how well he was educated. His death is the second major tragedy this year involving a University of Kentucky basketball player, starting with the arrest of former Kentucky great Antoine Walker on very serious gambling charges. When I was a student at Kentucky, it was a common perception among the student body that athletes were not getting the academic attention they deserved.

While we can't say for sure that Turpin was or was not educated well when he was at Kentucky, the fact that he came back to a "stellar" career as a security guard seems to imply that his college education hardly prepared him for a life of anything other than basketball. Turpin certainly deserves some of this responsibility, but as someone who attended and taught at the University of Kentucky in the past, it is my presumption that Turpin was probably not forced to study as hard as he was forced to practice. In fact, Kentucky recently hired coach John Calipari, who is known for having numerous NCAA violations, along with a horrifically bad graduation rate. This year, the GPA of Kentucky's basketball team was an abysmal 2.025, which is the lowest among any of U. Kentucky's athletics teams and also the worst among the 20 athletics programs that reported their grades to the Lexington Herald Leader Newspaper in response to their request.

Such terrible academic performance on the basketball team is nothing new at Kentucky, and was likely even worse during the era of Melvin Turpin, when the program nearly received the NCAA death penalty because it had so many recruiting violations. I find is amazing and ironic that a place that allegedly proclaims itself to be an academic institution can always find a way to make sure players come to practice every day, but then claim that they are unable to control how much they study. Additionally, the choice of an academic institution to hire a coach who has clearly communicated that academics are not his top priority is yet another reminder that many of these universities only care about using these kids for money. Perhaps if Turpin had received merely a fraction of the millions he earned for the university as a player, he might have had a more fulfilling existence. My condolences go out to his family. May Melvin Turpin rest in peace.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here.