By Russ Brown
NKyTribune correspondent
LOUISVILLE — University of Louisville athletic department and administration officials say they can’t comment on the NCAA’s ongoing investigation of the school’s men’s basketball program, but evidently the gag order doesn’t apply to coach Rick Pitino. Or else he is just ignoring it.
Pitino continues to be outspoken about the sex scandal case, with his latest comments coming on ESPN’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning” radio show Tuesday during which for the umpteenth time he denied having any knowledge of the alleged sex parties in Minardi Hall, the players’ dormitory, and touched on other aspects of the case under questioning from the hosts.
Among other things, Pitino said he believed he had people in place to avoid any trouble and that he is heartbroken by the charges that former graduate assistant and director of basketball operations Andre McGee provided money for strippers and prostitutes.
McGee, who played for Pitino at UofL from 2005-09, joined Pitino’s staff in January of 2010 as a grad assistant, then was promoted to director of basketball operations in 2012. He left the Cardinals in 2014 to become an assistant coach at Missouri-Kansas City, but resigned from that post last fall.
“You have your dorm security people, then you have your graduate assistants,” Pitino said. “One unfortunate one was Andre McGee, whose sole responsibility was to make sure the kids get to school on time, get up in the morning when they have some type of presentation or they have breakfast with the head coach. Then we’ve got another grad assistant. So we did have people in place and the one person with sole responsibility to make sure they do the right things, unfortunately, was Andre McGee. So that was the problem there.”
Pitino was asked about where the money — estimated at $10,000 by former escort Katina Powell — could have come from since McGee was not highly paid. He said he doesn’t know and McGee isn’t talking.
“As director of operations (McGee) was making good money. As a grad assistant he was getting very little money,” Pitino answered. “If money was paid for things other than a strip party per se, then a lot of people are in some serious criminal trouble. So that’s one of the reasons Andre McGee doesn’t speak; he is being told by his lawyer not to speak because if you get indicted there’s going to be a problem. You don’t want to get indicted in this type of situation because the maximum sentences are very, very large.”
Pitino said that under orders from the NCAA he has had no contact with McGee since sending him a text message late last year.
“If I could just get Andre McGee in a room for 10 minutes, I would say, ‘Why would you do this? What purpose did it serve? We didn’t need this,'” Pitino said. “We’re not Kentucky where we’re recruiting the one and dones. We’re recruiting the Russ Smiths of the world; he’s a 2-star athlete who becomes a first team college All-American. Gorgui Deng, who is starting for the Minnesota Timberwolves, wasn’t ranked in the top 25. Terry Rozier, playing for the Boston Celtics, wasn’t ranked in the top 60.
“So we have a different way we recruit and it didn’t make any sense what was going on. How these women infiltrated our program is very disturbing to me and why did Andre McGee get tied into this. Only Andre can make those answers, and some day I want him to do that. The last text I sent to him, I said, ‘Andre, I want one thing and that’s for you to be honest and tell the truth.'”
Pitino will meet with NCAA investigators for the first time next month and indicated he will emphasize his and Louisville’s past dedication to NCAA rules and deny any personal knowledge of the parties.
“I’m going to tell them, and it will sound a little bizarre to them, that I’ve been a believer in these rules for over 30 years,” Pitino said. “Matter of fact, people call me a little bit of a micromanager in terms of. . .we’ve had the highest GPA for three years now in three different conferences. We get after our guys academically. We run an extremely disciplined program, so there’s a tremendous contradiction of this going on, and to say it breaks my heart would be putting it mildly.
“The thing that is most disturbing and the thing that hurts the most is we keep asking the question why? Why was this done? And that’s what really eats at all of us, because there’s no head coach in college basketball that would (learn about) this type of behavior and then not immediately fire or discipline anybody who was involved. How it didn’t get back to anybody at anytime is mind-boggling to me. So we’re going to let the NCAA fully investigate, and hopefully they come up with the right answer because it’s puzzling to a lot of us.”
PITINO HITS BACK AT CAL
Pitino weighed in on the NCAA Tournament, saying he believes the teams with the best chance for winning the national championship are Kansas, Michigan State and North Carolina; that he is also “very bullish” on Virginia; and that his sleeper pick is Saint Joseph’s.
He added that he thinks Kentucky is a very dangerous team, too, because of its talented backcourt of Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray.
“Kentucky’s got the best backcourt in the nation, and with Tyler Ulis and Murray, anything can happen with them in a good way,” Pitino said.
Then he took a jab at UK coaching rival John Calipari for his criticism of the NCAA selection process. The Wildcats are a No. 4 seed in the East Regional. Calipari thought they should be a 3 seed, but said he wasn’t surprised, sarcastically adding that he thought the NCAA might bring back UofL off its self-imposted postseason ban and pair the Cards against the Cats or “switch over and put the (NBA Golden State) Warriors in there.”
To which Pitino responded:
“Well, I’ve known John since he was 15 years of age and ever since he got into coaching. That’s his M.O.. He tries to make the world being against him. He does the same thing that John Thompson did at Georgetown — the world’s against us. Wherever he’s going, he’ll probably stay 30 miles outside of town because the hotel’s not good enough.
“Nothing’s ever good enough, the world’s against us. He gets to his players and says we should be seeded much higher. Matter of fact, how dare they put Kansas the No. 1 seed, it should be Kentucky. And he’ll have all those guys fired up. He did that great at UMass. It’s sort of difficult for him to buy into that at Kentucky, but he’s still trying to do it.”