Expect more dirt kicked onto college hoops

Within 24 hours of the story breaking that the FBI was investigating college basketball, Louisville’s Rick Pitino and his boss, Tom Jurich, were on leave and almost certainly on their way out.

It started when the FBI arrested four college basketball assistant coaches from different schools and assorted others on federal corruption charges for paying players to attend a certain school, sign with certain agents, sign with financial investment companies and sign with certain clothing/shoe companies.

Arrested were USC’s Tony Bland, Auburn’s Chuck Person, Arizona’s Emanuel Richardson and Oklahoma State’s Lamont Evans. Two other schools reported to be involved were Louisville, which is now obvious, and Miami.

It seems a lot of cash has been flowing around the country to teenagers, coaches and others. Untaxed cash, so expect the IRS to get interested sooner rather than later.

Also expect some heat on South Carolina, because Evans spent the four years previous to last season working for Frank Martin, who made that miraculous run to the Final Four in 2017. Evans coached last season for Oklahoma State under Brad Underwood, who left to take over the University of Illinois in March. New Oklahoma State Coach Mike Boynton retained Evans.

The parents of an unnamed player, who didn’t commit to Louisville until June, apparently got $100,000 for their son to play for the Cardinals.

Pitino was involved with a sex scandal in 2009 (an extramarital affair and attempted extortion by the mistress), and in 2015 a Louisville assistant basketball coach was reported in a book by a local madam to have supplied strippers and prostitutes for recruits. Louisville self-imposed an NCAA Tournament ban for 2016, and Pitino was suspended for the first five games of ACC play this season as a result.

It appears the major connections to this investigation are employees of Adidas, the clothing/shoe company, which has already fired three employees.

At least two of these assistant coaches might use the schools’ record to claim innocence. USC and Bland are 70-64 overall and 24-48 in Pac-12 play in his four seasons there. Person was hired by Bruce Pearl and Auburn in April 2014, and they are 44-54 and 16-38 in the SEC in three seasons.

Or perhaps they were really bad judges of talent. Bland most likely won’t claim anything; he was reportedly caught on tape taking $13,000 to be used to send players to a certain agent.

This is likely just the tip of the iceberg, but keep in mind Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and others were not mentioned. They, like the majority of colleges in America, have contracts with Nike.

In fact, only two SEC schools are with Adidas: Mississippi State — which recently took a basketball recruit from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville — and Texas A&M. Auburn and South Carolina sport Under Armour, and everyone else is with Nike.

It will not be a surprise if USC head Coach Andy Enfield and Auburn head Coach Bruce Pearl get behind Pitino in the “I knew nothing” line.

Enfield gained fame when he led Florida Gulf Coast to the Sweet 16 in 2013. He has not been as successful, and UCLA is way ahead of the Trojans.

This would not be Pearl’s first skirmish with the NCAA. He was hit with a three-year show cause by the NCAA in 2011 for problems with the NCAA while he was the head coach at Tennessee. Auburn hired him months before the ban ended.

Cheating in college basketball has been around since the first bookie took a bet. It has gotten complicated and usually done very cautiously, but you don’t mess with the FBI and IRS.

Stay tuned. This story will have more headlines.