Louisville is
voluntarily withholding its men’s basketball team from this season’s Atlantic
Coast Conference and N.C.A.A. tournaments, as the N.C.A.A. investigates a
scandal in which a former basketball employee is accused of having purchased
strippers and prostitutes for some recruits and their fathers from 2010 to
2014. James R. Ramsey, the university president, announced the decision, which
he said he made in consultation with Athletic Director Tom Jurich, at a news
conference Friday afternoon as Coach Rick Pitino, a two-time national championship
winner, looked on. After hearing from N.C.A.A. staff, Ramsey said, he
“determined it was reasonable to conclude that violations had occurred in the
men’s basketball program in the past.”
Pitino reiterated
previous statements that he had been unaware of the alleged violations. The
accusations were first made in a book published late last year by a woman who
said that Andre McGee, Louisville’s former director of basketball operations,
hired her to provide strippers and prostitutes at 22 parties at the
university’s residential hall for basketball players. Colleges frequently
self-impose postseason bans if it becomes clear the N.C.A.A. is likely to do so
in the future. Last year, Syracuse announced that it would withhold its men’s
basketball team from the postseason about a month before the N.C.A.A. Committee
on Infractions found violations related to players’ academics. Critics say that
such bans deal the harshest punishment to current players — many of whom might
not have borne responsibility for the alleged violations or even been on the
team when they are said to have happened — and not to administrators and
coaches. Louisville, ranked 19th, was coming off an upset victory over No. 2
North Carolina when the announcement was made. The Cardinals won the 2013
national championship.
