NCAA: Louisville Can Only Focus On Basketball Now
By Nathan Giese
The story is out there. They probably hoped that this would never be out in the public, but it’s there now. There’s no avoiding the talk, the speculation and the noise surrounding it. It’s the guy wearing the yellow shirt when everyone was asked to wear white.
Louisville’s world got turned upside down on Friday when news broke of the Katina Powell’s book “Breaking Cardinal Rule: Basketball and the Escort Queen” coming out with allegations of the basketball program’s involvement with prostitution under former Director of Basketball Operations Andre McGee.
In a very short amount of time, the report came out from Yahoo! Sports that they were investigating the claims, Louisville’s Athletic Director Tom Jurich and men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino each held press conferences, Missouri-Kansas City announced that McGee was placed on administrative leave and the book was released.
All of this happened in one day.
When these kinds of stories come out involving college athletics, they generally start with a whisper of something then drag on a few months before anything is confirmed or denied. Much of that has to do with with an NCAA investigation. They haven’t even gotten their hands on this thing yet and all of this is unfolding before our very eyes.
For those on the outside, it’s a sideshow, something that has become a bit entertaining (based on the absurdity of some of it) as more details emerge. For Louisville, it’s an unwanted distraction, coming at one of the worst possible times.
Practices were allowed to start on Friday across the country. For most teams, that’s the starting point they’ve been waiting for since last March. Louisville, while a great program and coming off of an Elite Eight appearance in 2015, is retooling their team this season and need to focus on working to get better as a team. This story being a story makes that a bit more difficult.
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Louisville’s top three scorers from last season are gone with Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier both declaring for the NBA Draft after last season and Wayne Blackshear running out of eligibility.
Replacing those three was a tall task in itself, especially with the limited experience coming back.
The top returning scorer from last season’s team is sophomore guard Quentin Snyder, who averaged 4.1 points per game last year. That’s it. That’s their top offensive weapon remaining from last season’s team.
There are some other piece coming back as well, though, namely in the frontcourt with 6-foot-10 junior center Mangok Mathiang (2.6 points, 4.7 rebounds, 46 blocks) and 6-foot-10 sophomore forward Chinanu Onuaku (3.0 points, 4.6 rebounds, 42 blocks). Despite only having three years of experience between them, those two will be looked at as the leaders for this version of the Cardinals.
Perhaps the biggest key to this year’s Louisville squad is the new additions, especially with the graduate transfers Damion Lee and Trey Lewis.
Lee, a high-scoring combo guard, comes to Louisville after spending the beginning of his career at Drexel. Last season, Lee averaged 21.4 points/game for the Dragons and will bring that scoring prowess to the Cardinals.
Lewis, a 6-foot-2 guard, joins Pitino’s squad after his stint at Cleveland State, which saw him average 16.3 points, 4.4 rebounds and 2.9 assists while shooting 42.3 percent from three.
Together, these two make for an interesting dynamic in the Louisville backcourt, even if it is just a rental option for Pitino. It’s enough to give the Cardinals a fighting chance in the ACC, but their on-court situation has taken a back seat with this scandal.
Luckily for the 2015-16 team, no current Louisville players were named in the book. Kami Mattioli of Sporting News lists the names explicitly mentioned by Powell here. That’s a bright spot as there isn’t one person on this team taking away focus from the rest of his teammates. There is one current player listed, but he plays for LSU, so that’s a different story for later.
What can’t wait for later is finding out how this entire scenario, as unseemly and odd as it is, plays out and how the team, the program and the school respond to it.
There’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who helped write the book in question, saying the allegations are “pretty damn credible”.
There’s another story from Powell about her trying to take the story to the NCAA at first.
There’s now three different programs involved with this based on how far this thing stretches (Louisville for the obvious reasons, UMKC for McGee’s taking of an administrative leave while being an assistant coach and LSU for having incoming freshman Antonio Blakeney’s name being mentioned in the book while being on a recruiting visit at Louisville) and it’s all going to get murkier as time passes.
There’s so much going on here and the story has only been a story for about five days now. Clearly there’s no telling where this thing’s going to go, but it’s not going to go away, that much is for sure.
What isn’t for sure is whether the current Louisville players will be able to look past this giant zit on the face of the program and focus on basketball.
In order to look past it, they’ll have to focus on basketball, what they can control. Players can’t control what the media will talk about, but they can control how loud that talk is. It’s amazing how quiet people get with outside stories when the product on the court gives them something else to talk about.
For Louisville, it’s about making it through the next five weeks until games officially tip off. Don’t let these things, which have nothing to do with this team, impact their play or their focus.
Focus on Samford, forget about Powell. That’s all Louisville players can do right now.