What is it about basketball coaches in the state of Kentucky lately?
Rick Pitino admits to having sex with a woman in a Louisville restaurant, and then goes ballistic at the news media yesterday. John Calipari comes to Lexington as the new UK coach, and promptly learns the NCAA has erased his trip to the Final Four with Memphis from the record book.
And now Calipari's predecessor at UK, Billy Gillispie, has been arrested in Anderson County in Kentucky and charged with DUI. The Lexington Herald-Leader says Gillispie was released from jail this morning. Police told the TV station Gillispie was pulled over in a white 2009 Mercedes with Texas tags on US 127 after someone reported seeing the car driving erratically.
A male passenger also was arrested and charged with alcohol intoxication.WLEX-TV says Gillispie told police he and his passenger had been golfing.
Police told WTVQ in Kentucky the arrest was at 2:45 a.m.
This is the third time Gillispie has been arrested for DUI. The previous two were in Texas and Oklahoma. The Oklahoma one was reduced to reckless driving and the coach pleaded guilty. In the Texas one, an El Paso prosecutor ultimately decided there wasn't enough evidence to determine Gillispie was drunk.
The Texas case drew a lot of attention, however, because Gillispie had been stopped after driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. Also, he handed police officers a credit card instead of his license when he was first asked for identification.
Afterward, Gillispie sent more than 1,000 handwritten letters of apology to UTEP season-ticket holders, according to the El Paso Times.
Gillispie left the UK job in March this year, but still is embroiled in a contract dispute with the school.
