LOUISVILLE PROBING CLAIM THAT RECRUITS HAD ESCORT SERVICE
The University of Louisville said Friday it has launched an investigation into allegations that former Cardinals men’s basketball staffer Andre McGee paid an escort service to provide sex for recruits.
The allegations by Katina Powell are in an upcoming book, “Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen,” from a publishing arm of the Indianapolis Business Journal. Some details of the book were published on the Journal’s website, and said that McGee hired Powell to provide strippers and prostitutes for recruits and some of their fathers during a four-year period.
Louisville issued a statement saying it learned of the allegations in August and immediately notified the NCAA. McGee left Louisville in 2014 to become an assistant at Missouri-Kansas City. That school put McGee on paid leave Friday night and said it was taking the allegations seriously.
Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino said the situation caused sleeplessness when he first found out and said he tried to conduct his own investigation before being rebuffed by the school’s compliance office.
He said McGee denied the allegations in a brief conversation.
Louisville retained Chuck Smrt of the Compliance Group to review the claims.
“We’re an open book. We want to get to the bottom of it,” said Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich.
The Journal’s summary of the book said that Powell brought women to 22 parties from 2010 to 2014 at Billy Minardi Hall, which houses the men’s basketball players at Louisville.
The woman said she and three of her daughters, along with other women, danced and stripped for Louisville recruits and players and performed sex acts with them, according to the book.
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