About five months after news broke of a former staff member allegedly paying women to have sex with Louisville basketball recruits, head coach Rick Pitino is finally scheduled to meet with the NCAA's investigators. Pitino has been vocal about his criticism of the NCAA's investigation, the timing of its actions and the school's perceived need to appease the NCAA.
Pitino has also outspokenly denied having any knowledge of what was going on, and he appears to be preparing to challenge the NCAA over its policy requiring athletics coaches to know everything going on in their respective programs. Pitino has not confirmed when he will meet with investigators, but seemed to confirm it will be sometime next month.
The coach joined ESPN Radio's Mike and Mike Tuesday morning, and disclosed what he plans to tell the NCAA.
"Well I'm going to tell them that - and it will sound a little bizarre to them - I've been a believer in these rules for over 30 years. As a matter of fact, people call me a little bit of a micromanager. We've had the highest GPA now in three different conferences every year," Pitino said. "If I could just get Andre McGee in a room for 10 minutes I'd say 'why? why would you do this? What purpose did it serve? We didn't need this to get recruits. You know we're not Kentucky where we're recruiting the one-and-dones. We're recruiting the Russ Smiths of the world. He's a two-star athlete who becomes a first team college All-American."
"We have a different way we recruit," he concluded.
The former Louisville basketball staffer in question, Andre McGee, played for the Cardinals under Pitino from 2005 to 2009 before becoming a graduate assistant at the school in 2010 and then the director of basketball operations in 2012. McGee left Louisville in 2014 to become an assistant basketball coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He resigned shortly after news of the scandal broke.
Katina Powell claimed in a book published last fall that McGee paid her and other strippers and escorts to entertain Louisville basketball recruits at parties in the Billy Minardi residence hall on various occasions from 2010 to 2014. In some cases, Powell said McGee paid the women to have sex with the recruits and she heavily implied Pitino was at least aware McGee was throwing these parties.
Speaking with Mike and Mike, Pitino claimed it is generally irregular for head coaches to ever show up at student-athletes' dorm halls, but that he went to Billy Minardi Hall on a regular basis and never noticed anything out of the ordinary.
The NCAA has apparently not interviewed McGee, and he has not commented publicly due to an active law enforcement investigation. Powell has met with NCAA investigators, as have multiple former recruits that said they attended McGee's parties at Louisville.
