A little less than two weeks ago a former Louisville recruit, JaQuan Lyle, confirmed allegations against Louisville that they paid escorts to dance for them at parties while they were on recruiting visits. Now five more players have reportedly come out and confirmed these allegations as well and even more information has come out including the fact that several former Louisville recruits had sex with escorts during their visits that was paid for by former assistant graduate coach Andre McGee, according to John Barr and Jeff Goodman of ESPN.
The five recruits that confirmed these allegations were unnamed but they reportedly attended parties where these women danced for them, stripped naked and even sometimes had sex with the players if McGee paid extra money.
One of the recruits who ended up not attending Louisville said "I knew they weren't college girls. It was crazy. It was like I was in a strip club." As for the players that did end up attending Louisville they said that this continued even after they made their decision and started playing for the team.
This all started when former madam, Katina Powell, released a book called "Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen" where she described upwards of 20 stripping and sex parties from 2010-2014 at the Louisville campus. McGee reportedly paid about $10,000 for the dancers over that time period but also gave Powell extra money for side deals which included sex with the recruits and even their families or guardians that came on the visit with them.
Among the former players who were alleged to have sex with the escorts are Russ Smith, Montrezl Harrell, Terrence Williams and Terry Rozier. JaQuan Lyle and Antonio Blakeney were also named but neither of them decided to attend Louisville as Blakeney is now at LSU and Lyle is now at Ohio State.
McGee has since left Louisville and is now an assistant coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City but he is on administrative leave while this is under investigation. The NCAA is currently still investigating Louisville and everyone else involved but things aren't looking so great for them at the moment.
For his part, head coach Rick Pitino continues to deny that he knew anything about these parties if they actually did happen.
"Not myself, not one player, not one trainer, not one assistant, not one person knew anything about any of this. If anyone did, it would have been stopped on a dime. Not one person knew anything about it," said Pitino.
Rozier also came to his defense saying that Pitino used to take recruits out to dinner and he had no idea what happened at the dorms afterwards. Rozier never denied that these parties happened but he did say that Pitino's "nose is clean."
If the NCAA finds enough in their investigation, and it seems very likely they will, they will probably not exonerate Pitino like Rozier is. SMU just received massive sanctions for having an assistant coach help a player with homework and head coach Larry Brown got a nine game suspension so if Louisville is viewed to be in the wrong here than they will be facing enormous sanctions and Pitino will likely face huge repercussions.
