Ole Miss lost to Louisville last night, but the real story is coach Andy Kennedy’s arrest early Thursday morning. You either believe one of two stories:

1) The cabbie’s side:

Jiddou said he picked up Kennedy outside the Lodge Bar on Seventh Street, with the coach seated behind him. Kennedy asked him to pick up friends on the next block. When Jiddou got there, he found four others, too many to legally fit into his four-seat cab. Kennedy grew angry, Jiddou said. “He started calling me ‘Osama,’ ‘Saddam Hussein,’ everything Middle East he could think of,” Jiddou said. Jiddou said Kennedy then reached up from the back seat and punched him in the left cheek.

2) Andy Kennedy’s side (Gary Parrish uses a source here, but it’s safe to assume that the source was in Kennedy’s crew):

After driving “maybe a tenth of a mile” the cab driver realized there were five people in the car, and he told the coaches that he could not take five passengers. So he stopped, at which point Kennedy and his assistants jumped in another cab, one with a driver willing to take five passengers. At that point, the source said, the first cab driver pulled up beside the second cab driver and started yelling at the second driver “in a foreign language,” and then the second cab driver turned to the coaches and asked if they owed the first cab driver money.

The coaches said they did not owe anybody anything because the first driver refused to transport them. Then, according to the source, assistant Torrey Ward, who is black, told the driver to stop talking to the other driver and to get them back to their hotel.

“And then the cab driver turned around and said “Shut the f-ck up, n-gger,” the source said. “That’s when things got heated.”

According to the source, the coaches and cab driver did exchange words, “but nobody hit the driver.” The source added that Kennedy and his assistants tried to get out of the cab, but that the driver locked the doors and got on his cell phone, “and we think that’s when he called the cops.” Eventually, the source said, the driver unlocked the doors and let the coaches out. They then got in a third cab and traveled about a half-mile before the cops pulled the cab over and approached the car.

“The cops said, ‘Coach Kennedy, we need you to get out of the car,” the source said. “They told him he was under arrest for assault.”

According to the source, Armstrong came to the defense of Kennedy, started telling the police “this is bullsh-t” and that Kennedy didn’t do anything wrong. That’s when Armstrong was arrested, and then White, Miller and Ward waited at the police station for Kennedy and Armstrong to be released.

Upon first hearing the story, our gut reaction was that Kennedy might be in some trouble. But if his side has a scintilla of truth – five people in a cab, his coaching staff with him, the “other cab” scenario – this will probably wind up resulting in nothing because Kennedy has a boatload of witnesses. But there’s still a part of us that wonders – why would a cab driver make this up? He couldn’t possibly been aware of who Kennedy was – if we were driving a cab and Kennedy got in, we’d have no clue (especially based on that mug shot – geez).

Too bad this happened in Cincinnati and not Vegas – they we’d have the entire scene on video, which would be too awesome for words.

Ole Miss backs coach Kennedy (Cincy Enquirer)
The Ole Miss Side of the Story (CBS Sports)