Louisville men's hoops avoid major sanctions

Nov. 3—The long dark cloud that has been hanging over the University of Louisville's Men's Basketball program has now disappeared, as their long-running NCAA infractions case, after being absorbed into the soon-to-be defunct IARP board, has come to a close. After a long seven-year period that saw multiple allegations come to light for Louisville, including the famous FBI investigation into recruiting practices, in particular for the Cards the recruiting and committing of former top high school prospect Brian Bowen that would cost former head coach Rick Pitino and former athletic director Tom Jurich their jobs, as well as the more recent allegation by former assistant coach Dino Gaudio that resulted in the attempted black mailing of former head coach Chris Mack, the Cardinals have finally learned of their penalties.

When it comes down to what the violations were, Louisville was charged with one level 1 violation for the FBI investigation, and five level 3 violations for the violations that occurred under Chris Mack. Most pundits agreed that there was a chance that multiple level 1 violations would be laid against the Cardinals.

Louisville managed to avoid a postseason ban, likely to be one of the harshest penalties they could have endured. Instead, the main penalties they were hit with were a $5,000 fine, small recruiting restrictions that include a seven-day reduction in recruiting days and two-week bans on unofficial visits and any kind of communication with recruits, and two years of probation. Additional penalties include public reprimand and censure, probation publicized by the NCAA, no graduate assistant managers or non-coaching staff allowed at practice for 10 days this season, and no personalized recruiting videos for the rest of the 2022-2023 recruiting calendar.

As far as the coaches named in the case, two former assistants have been hit with two-year show-causes that will prevent them from recruiting during the two years, Kenny Johnson (now at Rhode Island) and Jordan Fair, who hasn't coached Division 1 basketball since he was fired by Louisville in 2017. Both former head coaches, Rick Pitino and Chris Mack, did not receive any penalties or show-causes. IARP concluded that "no violation by former head coach No. 1 (Pitino) occurred given that he demonstrated he promoted an atmosphere of compliance," when talking about Pitino, who is now the head coach at Iona.

Both the University of Louisville and former coach Pitino are set to have press conferences later today covering the results of the IARP findings.

Jacob Pratt is the Sports Editor of the Commonwealth Journal and can be reached at jpratt@somerset-kentucky.com. You can follow him on Twitter @PrattTheNation