College basketball: The NCAA suspends Louisville coach Rick Pitino for the season’s 1st 5 ACC games.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The NCAA suspended coach Rick Pitino on Thursday for five Atlantic Coast Conference games for this upcoming season, part of a series of sanctions stemming from the Louisville basketball infractions case.
The NCAA also hit Louisville with what it described as “a vacation of basketball records in which student-athletes competed while ineligible” from December 2010 to July 2014.
“The university will provide a written report containing the games impacted (by the vacation of records),” the NCAA’s statement said, “to the NCAA media coordination and statistics staff within 45 days of the public decision release.”
Compliance consultant Chuck Smrt, hired by Louisville to run its internal investigation, said the ruling could impact 108 regular-season and 15 NCAA Tournament wins, including the Cards’ 2013 national championship or their 2012 Final Four appearance.
Smrt called the ruling “severe” and said it “exceeded our expectations.”
In a statement from interim Louisville president Greg Postel, the school announced that it would appeal what it called “excessive” NCAA penalties.
“The entire U of L community is saddened by what took place,” Postel’s statement said. “It never should have happened, and that is why the school acted to severely penalize itself in 2016. Today, however, the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions went beyond what we consider to be fair and reasonable. We intend to appeal all aspects of the penalties.”
Louisville also received a $5,000 fine and must return money received from conference revenue sharing from 201215 NCAA Tournament appearances.
“The panel also accepted the university’s self-imposed 2015-16 postseason ban,” the release said.
Carol Cartwright, the president emeritus of Bowling Green and Kent State and chief hearing officer for the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions panel for Louisville’s case, said the panel rejected Louisville’s argument focusing on the monetary value of the impermissible benefits in the case.
Cartwright said the panel instead considered the safety and well-being of the student-athletes involved to determine its ruling.
“For 35-some-odd years I’ve had a lot of faith in the NCAA,” Pitino said. “… Personally I’ve lost a lot of faith in the NCAA with what they just did. … This is over the top. It’s to the point that it’s not even conceivable, what I just read.”
Pitino added that he would put his faith in the appeals process, which could take up to three months, according to Smrt. Louisville has 15 days to inform the NCAA that it will appeal the decision and then 30 days to file its actual appeal documents.