College Hoops 2015-16

Gonna start this one early since it's already leapt ahead of everything else in this little corner of the world.

To say that Louisville is in trouble is the understatement of the month. Just google "Breaking Cardinal Rules" by Katina Powell and Dick Cady. Ms. Powell is a local product who claims to have hosted stripping parties at the men's basketball dorm, Billy Minardi Hall, between 2011 and 2014 (roughly). Although her accounts are sketchy, and her credibility suspect at best, there's a general consensus that some of what she is alleging, including "side deals" with players and recruits for sex, is valid. She was introduced to then graduate assistant coach Andre McGee by a mutual friend, a barber. The rest is readily available all over the interweb.

I don't see Pitino and possibly Jurich surviving this. The president of the school, Jim Ramsey, is nearing retirement anyway, so I expect him to come out of this relatively unscathed. But Pitino will surely lose his job at Louisville. The only variable is time.

 

This story at Louisville is so cringe-worthy it's hard to even talk about. Pretty much everything that Powell has alleged has been corroborated by former players/recruits. That being said, I wouldn't put it past Pitino to survive this. At this point there's no proof that Pitino knew about it (yeah, right), and he and the program will pin everything on Andre McGee (who's already lost his job at UMKC). Also on Pitino's side is that Powell is asking for immunity from prosecution before testifying to the NCAA. Given the dozens of illegal acts she's surely committed, she's surely not going to testify unless granted that immunity.

Pitino seems dug in on this and determined the stay on as coach. Given his success there, the University has every incentive to insure that happens. If I had to guess, I'd say UL pins everything on McGee, Powell doesn't testify to the NCAA, and UL looses a couple scholarships and gets some sort of post season ban.

 

I wish that were the scenario, sir, but I don't see it ending that well. The latest today is that the Jefferson (Louisville) Commonwealth's Attorney (the District Attorney in most places) is empaneling a grand jury to hear evidence and has served at least one subpoena. The book's publisher, IBJ Book Publishing LLC of Indianapolis, acknowledged today that they have received a subpoena from the grand jury. Katina Powell's lawyer says she has not been served with one...yet.
The common wisdom around here is that it's irrelevant if Pitino knew about specific, or even general activities described in her book. He hired, McGee, not Tom Jurich, even though he claims to have, so Pitino is as much on the hook since he trusted McGee and was his de facto agent in that position. There also appears to be enough corroboration to trigger the phrase "lack of institutional control," which is NCAA speak for consideration of the death penalty. We shall see.

 

And late this afternoon Ms. Powell's lawyer confirmed that she had also received a subpoena from the grand jury.

 

Things have quieted a bit on the scandal front, although Ms. Powell is supposedly talking to the NCAA sometime this week. Louisville doesn't have any serious opponents until the end of November, first of December when they play St. Louis in Brooklyn at Michigan State at the Izzone. Kentucky plays Duke in Chicago tomorrow night. That should provide some insight as to how far each will go in March.
Indiana won't be truly tested until they go to Hawaii for Thanksgiving, unless Creighton is better than I thought. From what little I've seen so far, Kentucky has the horses to contend again for the national title. Although they won't be the overwhelming favorites like they were last season, I would not be at all surprised if they ended up in the championship game...again.

 

Big early season victories for Kentucky and Sparty last night, early season being the key words here. Still, you can see any of these teams making a deep run in March. Kentucky looks quite dangerous to me, and they won't be expected to dominate like they did last season, which means their chances of winning it all again are that much greater to me. As great as they looked last night, there's lots of room for improvement. Scary.

 

Maryland hosted Georgetown for the 1st time since 1973 & Cole Fieldhouse was ROCKING! It's criminal that 2 relevant hoops programs less than 20 miles apart haven't been playing each other annually, but hopefully the politics are over. The game lived up to the hype in every way.

My Ags are off to a good start with a pair of 100 pt games, winning by around 40 pts in each, albeit against a pair of tomato cans. I'm looking forward to seeing this squad with its highly touted recruiting class against legit competition. Billy Kennedy has had such a rough go of it since coming to Aggieland, I'm really rooting for him to succeed.

 

I'll be interested in seeing how your Aggie team fares this season. I have to think that recruiting class is unprecedented in College Station. Whatever that staff is doing in recruiting, they're doing it well . I know my Illini were hard after Elijah Thomas, and I was pretty bummed when he went elsewhere (although I'm used to that feeling as an Illini fan).

 

Unprecedented by a very wide margin.

 

Maryland SHOULD be playing Georgetown. And Kentucky SHOULD be playing Indiana...EVERY YEAR!

 

No Fear the Turtle HD??? No doubt it's still strange to see Maryland in the Big 14 'er 10 (at least us left coasters changed the Pac name to the # of teams in the conference), however there is a change going on in College Park. Oregon became Nike U, and Maryland is about to become Under Armour U. The guy is a Terp and he is about to pump millions into upgrading facilities.

Hats off to Roy Williams who has a policy of scheduling a game near the hometown of every recruit that goes to North Carolina. He did that for Marcus Paige who is from Iowa. Pretty gutsy to play at Northern Iowa who has one helluva mid-major program. No surprise that Northern pulled off the 71-67 upset.

 

@BarryWhite, have been waiting for you to point out to the Murray State alum amongst us that your Evansville Purple Aces went down to the Racers' home and got a W. Looks like it's the best team Evansville has had in awhile. They were playing 10 minutes from me down in Fullerton in the Wooden Legacy tourney and handled a very good UC-Irvine team (playing only 20 miles from their campus) quite easily.

Arizona went up to Gonzaga and got a big road win in a very hostile environment. My Cats have reloaded and while a work in progress should be a pretty good squad come March. Too bad Ray Smith, one of the crown jewels of last years 3rd ranked recruiting class is out for the season.

Pauley Pavilion is a magical place to see a game, the weight of Wooden is still very palpable when you walk into the place. The only problem is hardly anyone other than the students go to the games (except for the marquee teams on the schedule). Granted Pauley is a pain in the arse to park near (it's in the middle of Ucla's sprawling campus), and there aren't bars/restaurants within easy walking distance. Kentucky came to town and with it a sellout and a raucous atmosphere. The Bruins avenged the humiliating destruction UK put on them last year with an impressive 10 point win.

 

A&M beat the Zags as well to jump into the top 25. Unfortunately we followed that up with losses to Syracuse (neutral site) & away to Arizona State and fell back out of the rankings.

 

I watched the end of the Evansville=Murray game after monitoring it for most of the evening. I think both teams will contend for spots in the big dance this season. Glad to see the Purple Aces back in the hunt for the post season. I grew up reading about guys like Jerry Sloan, Larry Humes and Don Buse. The program has a great history, five Division II National Championships. They've had their ups and downs, mostly downs, since the '77 plane crash. It's good to see them back.
The Racers have a new coach since Steve Prohm's move to Iowa State. Matt McMahon, one of his former assistants, has replaced him. He left to become an assistant at Louisiana Tech before Prohm left for Ames. They're picked to win the West Division of the OVC. Belmont is the overall favorite. That's usually when we do our best work.

 

I thought you did your best work at the Derby.

 

HA! No, that's where I do my MOST work. Unfortunately. Everyone else is laughing, drinking, betting, losing and having fun. We're schlepping, humping, shooting, editing and, by the end of the day, aching. But it's all good.

 

It was close and entertaining, but Cal (UK version) beat Pitino (UofL version) again...now 8-1 since coming to Lexington. Here's hoping for a March rematch.

 

Strange time of the year that Louisville pulls the plug in terms of not playing in the tourney.

@LaxAttack, first the Hawkeyes football team has reaches the Rose Bowl, and now the hoopsters (who have been a solid program) might be on their way to the best year since Lute Olsen was the Iowa coach.

Out here on the left coast, the Pac 12 has a bunch of good teams, but don't see any of them getting past the Sweet 16 even though Oregon probably has the best shot to get to the Elite 8. USC AD Pat Haden was ripped for hiring Andy Enfield to take over the Trojan basketball team coming into the season, but Haden's patience has been rewarded as Enfield has recruited well, plays entertaining b-ball, has swept the cross-town basketball school, and currently sits in 2nd place in the conference.

 

The prevailing wisdom is that it's gonna get worse before it gets better, Joe. I've been covering a "device" scare at the airport today, but the accuser/author was on the electric radio this morning. Don't know what she said, but the school's clearly trying to get out in front of this. A lot of people are mad, they're just not sure who to be mad at. We should know more this summer, July perhaps. Will the NCAA be mollified by the self imposed penalty? I seriously doubt it, but we'll see. The thing that angers me is how the school victimizes the 5th year senior transfers, then markets them as martyrs for the program. Nobody's mad at Pitino for hiring McGee, who says Tom Jurich hired him. He also says Jurich, not the school pres., Jim Ramsey, made the call on the post season ban. Both of these assertions, along with several others, are complete BS. The buck stops with the head coach and, so far at least, he's not manning up.