Pitino, Larranaga spar over Harrell's throw
There will forever be multiple versions of the same story, the one where Montrezl Harrell rocketed a basketball off the forehead of Miami center Tonye Jekiri.
The end result was this: After reviewing the play, officials called a technical foul on Harrell and gave two shots and the ball to Jekiri and Miami. That's where the stories diverged after Louisville's 55-53 win over Miami on Saturday at the KFC Yum! Center.
Harrell, Louisville's All-American forward, said that he thought he was falling out of bounds after an offensive rebound and made a "basketball play" that, he added, "unfortunately" led to Jekiri taking a ball to the face.
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Jekiri, a 7-foot junior center, was not available after the game for comment.
Rick Pitino, Harrell's coach, said the officials' decision to give Harrell a technical foul "was a good call" and that the officials determined that Harrell meant to throw the ball off Jekiri's face.
"I was fine with it," Pitino said. "(But) if you want to call it, just call it. Stop (reviewing the play) for four minutes. I said, 'You're breaking up the game. You're giving them two timeouts.'"
Miami coach Jim Larranaga suggested that Harrell was taking his frustration out on Jekiri. Harrell, to that point in the game, didn't look like he would finish with the 21 points and 14 rebounds that he eventually did.
"I've played and coached a long time and I've never seen a player throw it at someone's head," Larranaga said. "They would throw it at his leg, his foot, trying to keep the ball from going out of bounds or something like that. Obviously he didn't do that."
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The bottom line is that most Louisville fans will believe Harrell, most Miami fans will side with Larranaga, and the full truth about the entire incident will likely never be known, or at least known for a long time.
In the meantime, it seemed to have started a new side story to the Louisville-Miami matchup, or more specifically, a new side story to the Pitino-Larranaga relationship.
Minutes after Larranaga addressed the media and said that the incident cost Jekiri the chance to start the second half because of a severe headache that Miami's trainers originally thought was a concussion, Pitino arrived at the podium to express some faux incredulity.
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"Here's the ironic thing: Coach Larranaga walked over to the officials, all the way over to the other side. I've never seen that," Pitino said. "I wanted to know what (Larranaga said). The official says, 'Well, he wanted to let me know that the big guy has a concussion on that play.' I said, 'What motive do you need to know that? He's back in the game.'
"So I called (Louisville football coach) Bobby Petrino -- this is no joke -- I said, 'Get a hold of that Miami doctor because, in 15 minutes, a kid went from a concussion to playing and totally healthy.' We're sending a plane down to hire that doctor for football. We will never have a concussion ever again. He was back 3-4 minutes later. He walked all the way over there to tell him he had a concussion, then he was back in the game."
Let the debate rage on.
Reach U of L beat writer Jeff Greer at (502) 582-4044 and follow him on Twitter (@jeffgreer_cj).