The FBI’s sweeping investigation into bribery and corruption in college basketball hit the courtroom this week, featuring testimony on Thursday from Brian Bowen Sr., the father of former five-star recruit Brian Bowen II.

Answering questions about a $100,000 payment from Adidas executives James Gatto and Merl Code and sports agent Christian Dawkins to send his son to the University of Louisville, Bowen Sr.’s made other allegations that landed on DePaul’s coaching staff.   

While on the stand, Bowen Sr. said DePaul assistant coach Shane Heirman paid him $2,000 per month to send his son to La Lumiere High School in La Porte, Indiana, where Heirman was the head coach. Heirman left La Lumiere in 2017 to join Dave Leitao’s coaching staff along with Tim Anderson, who worked with Bowen II’s AUU team, the Nike Elite Youth Basketball Association’s (EYBL) Mean Streets in Chicago.

Bowen Sr. also said he was paid $5,000-8,000 per month by Mean Streets to have his son join their program, but never mentioned Anderson. Before the trial began, Anderson and Heriman were both named on a list of “relevant individuals”presented to jurors. Jurors were told the individuals listed are not necessarily wrongdoers.

DePaul University was listed as one of a series of schools that may be mentioned in the trial, including Arizona, Louisville, NC State, Miami, LSU, Oregon, DePaul, Creighton, Texas, Oklahoma State and USC.

In August, court records made public a text message from Rick Pitino to a former assistant coach alleging that DePaul offered $200,000 to Bowen Sr. for his sons services.

“Coach DePaul [sic] trying to pay Bowen 200 k to come here. Crazy world!” Pitino wrote.

Just hours after the text found its way into the news cycle, Pitino said the text was a joke stemming from a baseless rumor.

“I said to [my former assistant coach] Kenny Johnson on the phone, ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’” Pitino told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “Where would DePaul get $200,000 to pay Brian Bowen? There’s no truth to what this guy said. He’s a nobody in the business. He hates DePaul, this guy.”

Pitino was fired from the University of Louisville shortly after news broke that Bowen accepted $100,000 to enroll there.

“DePaul University takes seriously the high standards of conduct expected in our athletics department and will not tolerate deviation from those standards,” a DePaul spokesperson said in a statement. “To date, neither the NCAA nor federal prosecutors have contacted us about this matter. We will, of course, fully cooperate if contacted in the future by the NCAA or federal law enforcement.”

The DePaulia has reached out to DePaul’s athletic department with request for interviews or comment and is waiting on a response. This story is developing and will be updated.