Rick Pitino Says Current Louisville Team is Better Than 1996

Not that Slick Rick hasn't embraced this "Silence is Golden" defense before when the subject has turned to inappropriate sex.

But when the day began, Pitino was absent from the festivities citing advice from UofL's legal counsel, and Swofford said he did not plan to intervene as Louisville and its attorneys attempt to vet allegations that a former Cardinals' staffer paid prostitutes to have sex with basketball players and recruits.

After all, the Cardinals lost the bulk of their scoring and rebounding from last year's Elite Eight squad when Wayne Blackshear, Montrezl Harrell, Chris Jones and Terry Rozier all departed, leaving Pitino to deal with an extremely young roster than has no seniors.

In that sense, U of L's decision to make them available to the ACC media is genius.

"I think the first thing is that, and I think this is pretty obvious to any of us in the room, what has been alleged has absolutely no place in college athletics in any way, shape or form", Swofford said as part of his annual afternoon forum.

Instead, a parade of reporters followed Lewis and Lee into their interview session, but the players largely avoided questions specific to the investigation, which included a visit by the NCAA to Louisville's campus earlier this week.

Rick Pitino, Jim Boeheim, Larry Brown and Roy Williams are dealing with stunning escort allegations, embarrassing academic fraud and multi-game suspensions.

Merely consider that beginning with Duke's 2001 title, ACC member schools - either those in the league then or those there now - have won a total of eight of the last 15 NCAA titles. It's water and oxygen rolled into one.

"Not myself, not one player, not one trainer, not one assistant, not one person knew anything about any of this", Pitino added to ESPN. If Pitino paid inadequate attention to the supervision of Billy Minardi Hall, the basketball dormitory he had built, that's a matter that deserves to be addressed. I don't know how successful they're going to be in terms of wins and losses, but after a month where it's been more hard than ever to make the statement, this team is going to make all of us damn proud to be Louisville fans.

But coaching and mentoring are two different things. Pitino has been doing this a lot longer than myself. And if the school really believes he should be exempt, why shouldn't the players?

Now, a few will say that all the blame shouldn't be put exclusively on McGee. But it's disappointing to see the university stand behind Pitino and pretend like the head basketball coach has no responsibility to be held accountable for his program, the culture created within it and the people he hires to execute it.

Whether completely fair or not, Louisville is quickly earning a reputation as a school where respect for women is a distant second, or fifth, to winning football and men's basketball games.

I never would have thought that this would happen under Pitino's watch, but I guess this isn't only school where this type of thing is happening.

Louisville shouldn't give him that chance. It should fire him, which would at least allow Slick Rick never again to feel the need to skip the ACC's media event.