In a new book, "My Story", former University of Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino said Gov. Matt Bevin meddled with the school’s leadership in order to appease rival UK basketball fans. Bevin took to the airwaves on Wednesday to deny the accusations.
Pitino railed against Bevin for unilaterally replacing all the members of U of L’s board of trustees in 2016, suggesting that the move was done at the behest of University of Kentucky boosters.
In an interview on The Greg Dunker Show on WKYX in Paducah, Bevin said the accusations were “sad”
“It sounds like the sad rantings of a person whose life has sort of fallen apart. It’s a shame, it really is. I don’t tend to read people’s hypotheses on things or fictional works and so I don’t imagine that’ll ever be on my shortlist of reading.”
Pitino was fired in October of 2017 after he was implicated in a federal bribery investigation involving basketball recruits and their families.
Pitino later sued the school, saying it had no legal justification for firing him because he didn’t know about the alleged scheme. In a section of the book called “The Governor Who Would Be King,” Pitino called Bevin a “religious zealot.
