By Matthew Barnes, Staff Writer
On Sep. 26, the FBI announced that multiple Power Five schools were under investigation for a “pay for play” scheme involving top recruits. The University of Louisville was one of those schools. The report claims that one of the Cardinals’ assistant coaches funneled $100,000 to Brian Bowen, an All-American small forward the team landed late in the recruiting season. This money was supplied by the school’s apparel provider, Adidas, but was contingent on if Bowen committed to an Adidas school and vowed to rep the brand as a pro.
The Louisville program was already suffering from a recruiting scandal involving prostitution that put UofL on probation and is still being investigated. By violating probation, the Cards became the first program in decades where the death penalty is actually realistic. The fanbase has gone through so much pain and heartbreak, and this criminal behavior just buries them even deeper. Could it get much worse?
Quick answer: It could and it did. The Louisville Board of Trustees, ran by interim president Greg Postel, decided to put Hall-of-Fame head coach Rick Pitino on unpaid leave, which is basically a polite way of firing him after 15 successful seasons. They then chose to kick athletic director Tom Jurich out of his job. For those unfamiliar with Jurich, he is considered by many to be the best AD in the nation, and elevated the Cardinals to become a top-tier program. Surely now, after violating probation and losing major pieces of the program, it couldn’t get worse, right?
Somehow, it still could, and still did. According to ESPN, the Cardinals 2018 recruiting class all decommitted, and it’s hard to blame them. The basketball program is starting completely from the bottom and isn’t considered a hot landing zone for recruits.
With all the negatives surrounding the Cards, many would assume the program is finished. However, there is a small glimpse of life left in the team’s future that fans can believe in.
To start, the university is making smart decisions with its coaching hires. Assistant coach David Padgett was hired as the interim head coach. He played under Pitino, knows the system well and is a guy whom the players were vouching for as the replacement. He has a clean record and should provide stability for an otherwise uncertain team. They also just hired Trent Johnson as an assistant, who is a more seasoned veteran with 36 years of coaching experience. Johnson was most recently Texas Christian University’s head coach, and he ought to be able to teach a lot to the 32-year-old Padgett.
In addition, this year’s Cardinals team is still good. Besides first-round draft pick Donovan Mitchell, the whole rotation is returning. It can be reasonably assumed that the players have developed over the offseason. If the Cards can avoid any bans, this squad has potential to overcome such challenging circumstances and create a good season.
Furthermore, on Oct. 13, the NCAA let the University of North Carolina off the hook after a seven-year investigation over academic fraud. This didn’t seem likely, and this kind of punishment inconsistencies makes the NCAA look powerless. In a way, this could actually help Louisville, because in order to maintain a sliver of order, the league might soften the blow on Louisville’s appeal for the prostitution scandal in order to seem unbiased. The program could potentially dodge a bullet if that were to be the case.
However, it’s hard to feel confident in the program’s future. Louisville could very well suffer for multiple years before it can truly rebuild. It will be strange to see a team that is normally dancing around the Final Four struggle to even make the tournament. With that being said, there’s always a shred of hope. The Cardinals are severely wounded, but they are not dead just yet.
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