Sex, Strippers, Katina Powell And Louisville Basketball: 5 Things To Know

ESPN has dropped a bombshell report detailing Louisville basketball’s recruiting efforts from 2010 to 2014 — which, the report says, included paying for strippers and hookers not only for potential recruits but also for their guardians and players.

The article says assistant coach Andre McGee enlisted a former escort to throw bare-skinned parties complete with private sessions with women that had nothing to do with basketball.

The time period involved supposedly included the year the Cardinals last won the NCAA championship, in 2013.

A Louisville spokesman told Patch the university had no comment during the school’s “review process” of the situation.

• SEE ALSO: Louisville Basketball: Strippers And Sex On Coach’s Dime, Report Says

Here are five things you need to know about the scandal.

The whistleblower

This all started when Katina Powell’s lovely titled book, “Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort,” came out this month, detailing “sexual recruiting tactics from the journal pages of an escort queen .”

ESPN reported that three of her daughters were among those who were paid for sex. Powell said they were all 18 or older when they did so.

This wasn’t limited to recruits

While the focus was on recruits and centered around their visits, current players (at the time) and even recruits’ guardians attended the parties and had sex with the dancers, ESPN reported

ESPN said that Powell was paid a total of $10,000, “which included sex with some recruits, guardians who accompanied them on visits and some Louisville players.”

Recruits chose who they wanted

“The recruit would pick out what girl he wanted,” Powell told ESPN. “Andre would come to me, tell me what girl the recruit wanted, and I would tell the girl, and she would say her price.”

One of Powell’s daughters, Rod Ni, described a player openly propositioning her.

One particular pllayer was there, she said, “and I don’t know, I guess he felt left out. He just kind of asked me if I would do it, and I did it. I got paid maybe $100, maybe a little more.”

• ESPN: Former Louisville recruit about his visit: ‘It was like I was in a strip club’

Did Rick Pitino know?

That’s the question of the hour. The Louisville coach maintains that, no, he knew nothing about it.

“Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know,” Pitino said on a conference call with ESPN and Yahoo. “I spoke to my nephew who lived in Minardi Hall, lived in the dorm, and he said he never saw anything the entire time he lived there. Obviously by what people are saying, something did go on, but there’s only one person who knows the truth.”

Powell says that’s a bunch of, um, bird droppings.

“I said, ‘Does Pitino know about this?’” Powell told ESPN. “And [McGee] said: ‘He’s Rick. He knows about everything.’”

This isn’t Pitino’s first sex scandal

In 2010, Pitino was in the middle of an extortion case after a waitress was indicted by a grand jury for trying to extort money from him to keep her quiet about an alleged rape in a restaurant.

She claimed Pitino raped her. He testified that it was consensual.

Sypher was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison and two years of supervised release.

Image via Louisville