For months, the guess here has been that Rick Pitino would resign at season’s end. That end is at hand. Louisville will play Saturday at Virginia, and that’ll be that. There will be no ACC tournament for the nation’s No. 11 team, no Big Dance.
Louisville's version of "One Shining Moment" came Tuesday night — on March 1, not the tradiational first Monday in April. The Cardinals commissioned a version of the song played at the conclusion of the NCAA tournament to salute seniors Trey Lewis and Damion Lee. The two were given rings bearing this team's slogan — "I've Got Your Back" — in a pregame ceremony and had their semi-shining moment after a skittish victory over Georgia Tech.
We around here can cite a precedent: Georgia removed the 21st-ranked Bulldogs from the 2003 SEC and NCAA tournaments in the wake of Tony Cole’s allegations of improper benefits. But Michael Adams and Vince Dooley delivered that blow three days before the postseason was to begin. Louisville has been a ghost ship for a month — and has sailed under a cloud since October.
In her book, "Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen," Katina Powell claims that strippers (including two of her daughters) were paid to entertain — and in some cases have sex with — recruits at Billy Minardi Hall. Five players offered corroboration to ESPN. Andre McGee, the former Louisville player and grad assistant said to have arranged the visits, has resigned from his assistant coach's job at Missouri-Kansas City.
From the first, Pitino has maintained his innocence/ignorance. After Louisville won at Tech on Jan. 23, he responded to this correspondent's question by saying: "I can't find one damn person — even my nephews — who knew anything about it or saw anything."
Then: “It just broke my heart into two pieces. Then you get a group of guys like this. … They’ve raised the spirits of our town. They’ve raised the spirits of each other and our team. When you needed a group like this, they came along.”
That glimmer of good feeling didn't last a fortnight. On Feb. 5, Louisville president James Ramsey announced that the team wouldn't play in postseason. That was viewed as a signal that Pitino was a goner: Would the school pull the plug on its flagship program if didn't believe Powell's allegations will be borne out?
Yes, Pitino is great coach. Yes, he led the Cardinals to the 2013 NCAA title in the Georgia Dome. Still: Could a man with one seamy incident on his record — he had sex with a woman he'd just met in a Louisville restaurant in 2003; she was convicted in 2011 of extorting him — keep his job after a second?
On Monday, Ian O'Connor of ESPN asked Pitino if Tuesday might indeed mark his final home game as Louisville's coach. The response: "I think anything's possible. (But) I doubt it. I don't think it's probable."
Louisville would never fire him. He’d agree to a negotiated severance before he’d allow that to happen. If he wants to keep coaching, he’d need to do it in the NBA. (Tough to get another college job after strippers-in-the-dorm.) The Cardinals, who think and pay big, would aim high for a replacement. (If Arizona’s Sean Miller says no, his brother Archie, who coaches Dayton, might say yes.) But this could be getting ahead of ourselves.
Earlier Tuesday, members of Louisville's board of trustees called for a vote of no confidence in Ramsey. (The vote was blocked because proper notice wasn't given.) A whistleblower lawsuit filed Monday by a former compliance officer alleges misconduct by Ramsey in a case that could involve misuse of school funds by two vice presidents. As Tim Sullivan of the Courier-Journal noted, Ramsey isn't seen as a Pitino ally. If the president is dislodged first, might the Hall of Fame coach get to stay?
The belief here is that he shouldn’t. (I speak as the son of a graduate of Louisville’s dental school, class of ’53.) If Pitino knew about the strippers, he has to go. If he didn’t know, he should have – meaning he still has to go. Few men are more charming than Pitino, but even he can’t charm his way around this.
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