Marc Tracy of The New York Times says Louisville head coach Rick Pitino claims dominion over everything in his program, except when scandal hits.
Tracy points out that Pitino’s time in the NBA didn’t necessarily go well, but when he has the level of control that he has in college, he is very successful.
When scandal happened at Louisville, however, Pitino said a rogue assistant (Andre McGee) was guilty of everything without the head coach’s knowledge.
Check out his thoughts:
Rick Pitino is no exception. He paces along the sideline, shouts out open men on the opposing team, calls out plays. In between, he crosses his arms and stands bolt upright, like a computer scientist confident he has just entered a line of unimpeachable code.
Pitino struggled in brief forays in the N.B.A., but he has reached the Final Four with three college teams and has won national titles at his last two stops, Kentucky and Louisville. That level of control over players seems to fit him as well as his pinstripe suits do.
Yet it is Pitino’s position — as well as that of the University of Louisville, where he enters his 16th season as coach — that he was not and should not be blamed for having been unaware that one of his staff members was spending thousands of dollars on stripteases and sex for more than a dozen Cardinals recruits and players over more than three years in a campus dormitory named for Pitino’s late and beloved brother-in-law.
That scandal, first revealed a year ago in a book by a woman who said she was the escort service employee whom the staff member — a former player of Pitino’s named Andre McGee — solicited, has now reached the stage of N.C.A.A. charges, with Louisville on Thursday releasing the notice of allegations it has received in the case.
