The rest of the college basketball season was looking pretty good for the Louisville Cardinals and coach Rick Pitino. They were ranked #19 and had just beaten #2 ranked North Carolina and were getting ready to gear up for the NCAA tournament. Now however, thanks to some serious allegations, the school has self imposed a post season ban for one year.
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The school announced the sanctions at a news conference Friday afternoon. University president James R. Ramsey acknowledged that it was “reasonable to conclude violations have occurred in the past.”
“I recognize that this is a significant penalty for our program,” said Ramsey, who was accompanied at the news conference by longtime coach Rick Pitino and athletic director Tom Jurich.
The players were informed at a meeting earlier Friday, according to multiple reports. The Louisville Courier-Journal was first to report the ban.
“This is certainly a night of extreme pain,” said Pitino, who called the news “a complete shock.”
No one from the school is admitting any fault but they have recognized violations uncovered and/or confirmed by the NCAA were severe enough that taking harsh action now, barely a month out from the start of the NCAA Tournament, was warranted. They still have the worry the NCAA could come in later and impose bigger sanctions so the school is trying to be proactive. Pitino still denies having any knowledge if recruits were being entertained by strippers and escorts.
In a book published last year, Katina Powell — a self-described former escort — alleged that Andre McGee, a former men’s basketball staffer at Louisville, hired dancers to strip and have sex with recruits and players at Billy Minardi Hall, an on-campus dorm.
Powell also told Outside The Lines that she brought roughly two dozen women to the dorm from 2010 to 2014, and that five or six of the women had sex for money with former Louisville players, active players or recruits who were visiting the campus. Five former players and recruits also told OTL that they attended parties that included strippers paid for by McGee.
“This is a punishment I thought would never happen this season,” Pitino said. “This is a decision that’s as harsh as anything I’ve seen. But I’m a soldier in this army and I will go along with Dr. Ramsey, and certainly there’s no one in life I have more respect for than Tom Jurich. So we will go along with this and we will play the last nine games of the season as if they’re the last nine games we’ll ever play the game.”
