Following directly on the heels of Rick Pitino's rant at the media yesterday about coverage of his sex scandal, news reports this morning have revealed that former Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillispie was arrested for DUI last night in Anderson County (Lawrenceburg), and spent the evening in the Franklin County (Frankfort) Detention Center. Watch out, Tubby Smith, it's not looking like a good week for former UK basketball coaches!
From www.Kentucky.com:
According to arrest records, Lawrenceburg police received a complaint about a possible intoxicated driver traveling north on the bypass from the Shell Station near the Bluegrass Parkway. The vehicle, a white 2009 Mercedes-Benz 300, had Texas plates.
The officers smelled a strong odor of alcohol as they spoke with Gillispie, who was driving, the police report says. His eyes were red and glassy and his speech was slurred, the citation states. Police asked Gillispie for his proof of insurance, and he said it was in his golf bag in the trunk, according to the court document. "During the exit he used the door for balance and was confused on how to open the trunk," the citation says. The report says Gillispie's insurance information was not in the bag, so he went to the passenger side of the car. "He was confused about how to unlock the vehicle and took several tries to unlock the glove box," the citation says. He was still unable to find the insurance, according to the officer's report.
Police said Gillispie refused breath and blood tests. According to arrest records, O'Connor also smelled of alcohol and was "heavily intoxicated, very unsteady on his feet and had slowed, slurred speech."
This was not Gillispie's first encounter with DUI arrests:
He was arrested in 1999 on charges of driving while intoxicated and improper use of a lane in Tulsa, Okla. He pleaded guilty to reckless driving; other charges were dismissed. In 2003, he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving while in his first year at the University of Texas-El Paso, but the charges were dismissed after a prosecutor decided there was not enough evidence to suggest Gillispie was drunk. With Kentucky's current DUI laws, Gillispie will not skate so easily as he did in those two earlier encounters. The Memphis situation notwithstanding, Mitch Barnhart and Lee Todd have got to be feeling just that much better about John Calipari this morning, especially when they look at that booking photo of Gillispie. Speaking of the Memphis situation, isn't this just another example of why some serious reform of the NCAA needs to happen? Sure, it's a bad thing if Derrick Rose had someone else take an SAT or ACT for him. But who is really at fault? How did this happen in the first place if the Educational Testing Service, or whomever administers the test, cannot pick upon a substitution? The integrity of the whole testing process should certainly be questioned. Then, the so-called NCAA "Clearing House" approved Rose for admission on an athletic scholarship. Don't John Calipari and Memphis have some right to rely on the very section of the NCAA that is charged with verifying eligibility? In normal legal theories, the NCAA should be estopped from later disqualifying a player if it has cleared him/her for eligibility, and surely should be prevented from punishing the school. The NCAA needs a long look in the mirror on this one, not punishment of the school who really only was mistaken in relying on the NCAA. Third, the NCAA's response to the above point was that the school had "strict liability" in these situations and had to be punished. The NCAA regulations, however, contain no such terms as "strict liability", and its own precedent in similar situations involving schools such as Duke, USC, and others does not support any "strict liability" contention. The NCAA's ruling in the Rose matter only provides further fuel to the allegation that certain schools are seen as fair-haired children, while others are considered bad actors that are guilty of anything and everything. In the SEC, Alabama and Kentucky are constantly under the microscope, while Tennessee seems to continually step in manure and come out smelling like the proverbial rose. I wonder how much longer this kind of thing will go on until there is an open revolt on a much larger scale than the BCS Football schools doing their own thing? NOTE: For those of you not addicted to UK basketball, the appellation "$6 Million Man" has to do with Gillispie's severance claim from his being fired by UK. That is the amount he is claiming in a lawsuit.









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