Rick Pitino and the Louisville men’s basketball team finally are paying the price for their role in a much-publicized sex scandal.
The NCAA announced Thursday it has suspended Pitino for the first five ACC games of the 2017-18 season for failing to monitor his program during a multiyear prostitution scandal. In addition, the team will be put on probation for four years and must vacate “all basketball records in which student-athletes competed while ineligible from December 2010 (to) July 2014.”
Those vacated wins very well could include the Cardinals’ national championship in 2013, although it will be up to Louisville to determine which games an ineligible player competed in, per Yahoo! Sports’ Dan Wetzel. The team won’t be barred from any future NCAA Tournaments, however.
Other minor penalties imposed against the Cardinals include scholarship reductions, recruiting restrictions and a $5,000 fine.
Allegations against Louisville first began in August 2015, when a woman named Katina Powell claimed a former Cardinals staffer paid her to provide strippers and prostitutes to recruits and their fathers over a four-year span from 2010 to 2014. Pitino steadfastly denied Powell’s allegations, which she published in a book titled, “Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen.”
The staffer, former assistant Andre McGee, also was hit with a 10-year show cause penalty, making it exceedingly difficult for him to find another NCAA job in that span.
Thumbnail photo via Thomas Joseph/USA TODAY Sports Images
