Five Former Louisville Basketball Recruits Confirm They Attended Parties Featuring Strippers and Sex (UPDATE)

More bad news for Rick Pitino.

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UPDATE:

Louisville head coach Rick Pitino spoke with several media outlets earlier this afternoon about the most recent OTL report. He essentially told Andre McGee that it's time for him to speak up and tell the truth. This is going to get interesting:

See original story below.

Earlier this month, a woman named Katina Powellreleased an explosive new book called Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen that featured her making some pretty shocking accusations about the Louisville basketball program. In the book, Powell claimed that former Louisville graduate assistant coach Andre McGee paid her in exchange for the services of a handful of escorts that worked for her. She detailed how McGee allegedly paid for these women to strip for and have sex with Cardinals recruits.

After the book was released, Louisville head coach Rick Pitino held a press conference and told the media that he did not know whether or not any of this had actually gone on during McGee’s time at the school. “To say I’m shocked, again, I’ll repeat it, it’s a mild understatement,” he said. “My heart’s just been taken out of my body and broken.”

Louisville was said to be launching their own investigation into the accusations made by Powell. But ESPN’s Outside The Lines also put together a report and, according to their findings, McGee did pay Powell to provide him with women for parties held at Billy Minardi Hall on the Louisville campus. OTL spoke with five former Louisville players and recruits who confirmed that they attended these parties, and one even revealed that he had sex with a woman at one of the parties after McGee paid her. Others revealed that the women stripped for the players at the parties.

“I knew they weren’t college girls,” one of the former recruits told OTL. “It was crazy. It was like I was in a strip club.”

In addition to speaking with the former Louisville recruits, OTL reviewed text messages that were sent from a cell phone belonging to McGee to Powell and confirmed their legitimacy. OTL also confirmed at least one wire transfer that was reportedly sent from McGee to Powell.

McGee, now an assistant coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, declined comment when contacted by OTL. Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich and Pitino also refused to comment when OTL reached out to them. You can read the entire OTL report here.

You can also watch Powell talk about her experiences with McGee in an exclusive interview with OTL below. She told OTL that she believes Pitino had to know what was going on.

“This is my theory," she says in the clip. "Four years. A boatload of recruits. A boatload of dancers. Loud music. Alcohol. Security cameras. Basketball players who came in at will. You’ve got players that are so loyal to Pitino. Who wouldn’t go back and be like, ‘Hey, we’ve got dancers and sex and all that going on.’ My thing is how could he not know?”

Watch the interview here:

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[via ESPN]

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