NCAA investigators visited the University of Louisville (UL) campus Monday and Tuesday to interview Cardinals basketball players and others associated with the program.
The interviews are the latest phase of the NCAA's investigation into allegations that a former staffer hired escorts to have sex with basketball recruits at parties from 2010 to 2014. ESPN's Jeff Goodman learned of the interviews via unnamed sources.
The allegations come from a book titled "Breaking Cardinal Rules," in which Katina Powell details parties at campus dorm buildings where she and other women were hired to strip and dance for Louisville basketball recruits. Powell claimed Andre McGee, a former UL basketball staff member and player, hired her and the women and occasionally paid them for "side jobs," which she told ESPN's Outside the Lines meant sex.
Neither the NCAA nor UL will disclose who spoke to investigators and what the nature of the interviews were, but a couple players commented on the matter during Louisville's ACC Media Day event Wednesday. Trey Lewis and Damion Lee, a pair of senior guards, told reporters it was hard to see their coach, Rick Pitino, refrain from public comment during the investigation, ESPN reported.
"He's not one to bite his tongue, and he knows if he was here, he speaks his mind and speaks from his heart," Lewis said. "He was advised not to be here because he couldn't speak about these matters, but he wants to talk."
Powell told OTL McGee implied to her that Pitino knows everything that goes on in his program and therefore knew about the strippers in the dorms. Pitino has previously stated that was entirely untrue. Meanwhile, McGee resigned from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where he was an assistant basketball coach, to focus on the investigation.
Powell's attorney, Larry Wilder, stated his client would not comply with investigators unless she is granted immunity, ESPN noted, as law enforcement is investigating the case alongside the NCAA and UL.
