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Sophomore Derrick Caracter has been a headache since he got to Louisville. Worse than a headache -- he has been a migraine. Worse than a migraine. OK, you want to know what Derrick Caracter has been? He has been a pain in the ass.
This is Louisville coach Rick Pitino's 22nd year as a college basketball coach, starting at Boston University and including stops at Providence and Kentucky. Since Caracter arrived on campus last summer, Pitino says, "I've had more problems in a year and a half than in all those places combined."
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| Will Pitino ground Derrick Caracter for an extended period? What do you think? (Getty Images) |
Caracter is the kind of guy who one day could own an Escalade, and maybe an entire Escalade dealership. Caracter could be that good. Which is why, despite being so bad, he was on the bench for Louisville's game against Purdue on Saturday and could be back on the floor Tuesday when the Cardinals play Marshall.
This comes one week after Caracter symbolically laughed in Pitino's face.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not mad at Caracter. You ask me, he's welcome to stay at Louisville as long as he wants. His continued presence makes Pitino look awful, and I'm all about anything that makes Pitino look awful.
This latest incident looks particularly awful. Here are the details:
In the days leading up to Louisville's game last Saturday against Dayton, Caracter got into trouble. Again. Caracter is always getting into trouble, whether he's not coming home at night or not going to class in the morning or whatever. As Pitino said in the second paragraph of this story, Caracter is a massive, never-ending problem.
Pitino wouldn't say what this particular trouble was before the Dayton game, but whatever it was, he said it was enough for him to suspend Caracter indefinitely. That was a big deal, because the Cardinals don't have any viable big men after Caracter -- don't tell me about 6-foot-10 senior Terrance Farley; I said "viable" -- and Dayton was a team that could beat them. Dayton was a team that did beat them last season, and a repeat of that loss last weekend, at home, would have been damaging to Louisville's NCAA Tournament resume.
Yet Pitino still was going to suspend Caracter.
"I was not going to play him in the Dayton game," Pitino said. "I was 100 percent sure not to play him. It was going to be a while before he stepped on the basketball court."
So this is what Rick Pitino -- that leader, that molder of men -- did. He went to his team and asked for their permission to suspend Caracter.
They said no.
