Missouri Athletic Director Mike Alden said yesterday that he and Coach Gary Pinkel didn’t receive what he termed "credible information" about the case until a few weeks ago. "What happens with us, when we get credible information — credible information — that we can be able to act on, our coaches try to react to that," Alden said. "For us, over the course of the last week and a half or a couple of weeks, we got some information that Coach wanted to be able to respond to, and he did." ... [A] source close to the alleged victim told the Tribune that the prosecutor’s office recently gave Washington the choice to plead to a lesser charge or go to trial for the felony charge. That development is a possible explanation for why Pinkel suspended Washington on Thursday.