By Travis HinesJun 21, 2017, 6:59 PM EDT
There’s not a lot of certainty in this world, but one of the closest things to it is college basketball coaches publicly coming to the defense of their embroiled colleagues. On Wednesday, it was Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim coming to the defense of Louisville coach Rick Pitino, whose program may be forced to vacate 108 wins and a national title due to its escort scandal.
Pitino’s refrain – one the NCAA has explicitly barred as an excuse – is that he knew nothing of the illicit activities that have gotten the Cardinals in trouble. Boeheim believes him.
“Obviously, when somebody does something like that there is going to be repercussions,” Boeheim told 104.5 FM in Albany, “and I don’t believe Rick Pitino knew about it but it still happened .. I didn’t know about somebody putting quotations in a paper at Syracuse but it happened.
“So, you know we’re going to take the hits for it. We took our hits, you know Louisville is taking their hits. I don’t like it, and there’s not much you can do about it.”
Of course, whether or not Pitino knew about it doesn’t really matter from the NCAA’s perspective. Plausible deniability is not a defense.
Pitino, who plans to appeal the decision, was suspended for the first five games of the ACC season this year. It’s Louisville’s potentially vacated title, though, that would seem to be the biggest punishment, one Boeheim, who got with with NCAA penalties in 2014, disagrees with.
“You know nobody knew they were gonna be made ineligible,” he said, “and then they’re made ineligible what? 10 years later? Or how many years later has it been, probably not 10 but 7. Then, you know, you take away games and I think that’s difficult. I think you have to punish schools but when you start taking games away I think it’s something I don’t have the solution for but I don’t like that particular part of the punishment.”
http://collegebasketball.nbcsports....tino-knew-boeheim-says-of-louisville-scandal/
There’s not a lot of certainty in this world, but one of the closest things to it is college basketball coaches publicly coming to the defense of their embroiled colleagues. On Wednesday, it was Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim coming to the defense of Louisville coach Rick Pitino, whose program may be forced to vacate 108 wins and a national title due to its escort scandal.
Pitino’s refrain – one the NCAA has explicitly barred as an excuse – is that he knew nothing of the illicit activities that have gotten the Cardinals in trouble. Boeheim believes him.
“Obviously, when somebody does something like that there is going to be repercussions,” Boeheim told 104.5 FM in Albany, “and I don’t believe Rick Pitino knew about it but it still happened .. I didn’t know about somebody putting quotations in a paper at Syracuse but it happened.
“So, you know we’re going to take the hits for it. We took our hits, you know Louisville is taking their hits. I don’t like it, and there’s not much you can do about it.”
Of course, whether or not Pitino knew about it doesn’t really matter from the NCAA’s perspective. Plausible deniability is not a defense.
Pitino, who plans to appeal the decision, was suspended for the first five games of the ACC season this year. It’s Louisville’s potentially vacated title, though, that would seem to be the biggest punishment, one Boeheim, who got with with NCAA penalties in 2014, disagrees with.
“You know nobody knew they were gonna be made ineligible,” he said, “and then they’re made ineligible what? 10 years later? Or how many years later has it been, probably not 10 but 7. Then, you know, you take away games and I think that’s difficult. I think you have to punish schools but when you start taking games away I think it’s something I don’t have the solution for but I don’t like that particular part of the punishment.”
http://collegebasketball.nbcsports....tino-knew-boeheim-says-of-louisville-scandal/
