LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A seething Rick Pitino said he could stay on the sidelines no longer.

The Louisville men’s basketball coach said video aired Wednesday of a police interview with a woman at the heart of sex and extortion scandal surrounding Pitino revived a ‘‘total fabrication of the truth.’’ In it, Karen Cunagin Sypher accuses Pitino of sexually assaulting her, an allegation she brought to police after she was accused of trying to extort millions from the coach. Prosecutors did not pursue charges against Pitino.

Against his lawyer’s advice, Pitino said he felt he needed to speak out.

‘‘Everything that’s been printed, everything that’s been reported, everything that’s been breaking in the news on the day Ted Kennedy died is 100 percent a lie, a lie,’’ Pitino said in a hastily called news conference. ‘‘All of this has been a lie, a total fabrication of the truth.’’

His remarks came two weeks after a five-minute apology for an ‘‘indiscretion’’ with Sypher at a Louisville restaurant in 2003. He has told police he had sex with her there.