University of Minnesota coach Richard Pitino stayed mum on specifics about the suspensions of three players at Tuesday's media news conference, citing student privacy laws, but took a cascade of questions regarding the now nationally reported situation.
One day after saying on his weekly radio show that he "anticipated" that guards Kevin Dorsey, Nate Mason and Dupree McBrayer would return on Wednesday vs. Wisconsin, the team announced that all three would sit out the remainder of the season.
Pitino would not confirm whether all three suspensions were due to the posting of sex videos on Dorsey's social media pages, nor whether the suspensions were all regarding the same incident generally.
The videos, in which only Dorsey is identified, were live only briefly on Friday evening before being removed.
Pitino said that the decision to suspend the players was his "in the end," after discussing the situation with his staff and interim athletic director Beth Goetz.
Regarding his earlier comments on the radio, he said "I probably shouldn't have answered it that way because I probably wasn't prepared to give an answer. I answered that the wrong way. I just wasn't sure how to answer it and I answered it the wrong way. Nothing really had changed, just more time passed and a lot of hard thinking and getting with our staff and everybody more than anything."
Pitino said he still is "not aware" of any pending criminal investigations. Asked whether he believed the incident could lead to extended punishments bleeding into next season or transfers by any of the three players he replied that he did not want to speculate.
Dorsey, Mason and McBrayer, he said, will still participate in practice and all other team activities.
