NCAA suspends Rick Pitino for first 5 ACC games in Louisville basketball infractions ruling

Jeff Greer | Courier Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Pitino on penalties: 'The NCAA got it wrong' A very disappointed Rick Pitino hit on several points during a press conference after the NCAA revealed the penalties for the men's basketball program. From social media to the fact that the NCAA thought the program was a big fraternity.

Correction: A previous edit in this story incorrectly referenced games Rick Pitino will miss due to the NCAA ruling. The 2017-18 conference schedule has not been released and that information has been removed.

The NCAA suspended coach Rick Pitino on Thursday for five Atlantic Coast Conference games for this upcoming season as part of a series of sanctions stemming from the Louisville basketball infractions case.

The NCAA also hit Louisville with "a vacation of basketball records in which student-athletes competed while ineligible" from December 2010 to July 2014. It was the most significant of the prescribed punishments, and the one that prompted pushback from U of L.

The ruling from the NCAA's Committee on Infractions is the culmination of an investigation that dated back to late August 2015, when U of L was first informed of a book written by escort Katina Powell that alleged former U of L basketball staffer Andre McGee paid women for dances and sex on behalf of U of L players and recruits.

"I don't believe the Committee on Infractions has ever encountered a case like this," Carol Cartwright, the chief hearing officer for the committee's hearing panel in U of L's case, said.

Cartwright, reading a prepared opening statement on an NCAA teleconference, called McGee's actions and violations "serious" and "repugnant."

Compliance consultant Chuck Smrt, hired by U of L to run its internal investigation into Powell's claims, said the ruling could impact 108 regular-season and 15 NCAA Tournament victories, including the Cards' 2013 national championship and their 2012 Final Four appearance.

Smrt said the ruling was "severe" and that it "exceeded our expectations." When the NCAA's enforcement staff released its initial notice of allegations in October, Smrt said he believed vacating wins would be an "inappropriate" punishment, and the university again repeated that belief in its January response to the NCAA.

Interim U of L president Greg Postel called the NCAA penalties "excessive" and said the school would appeal the ruling.

If U of L loses the appeal, the school will have 45 days after that process, which could run into the fall, to inform the NCAA which games involved ineligible players.

"The entire U of L community is saddened by what took place," Postel 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."

More: 5 quick takeaways from U of L basketball's NCAA punishment

More: Could Pitino be suspended? Could Cards lose a banner? Here's what NCAA ruling could mean for Louisville

Timeline: How Louisville got here

The NCAA imposed several other penalties after accepting U of L's self-imposed 2016 postseason ban, which kept the Cards out of the ACC and NCAA tournaments, and recruiting and scholarship reductions.

The proposed punishments include:

A $5,000 institutional fine

Four years on NCAA probation and the reduction of four men's basketball scholarships during that period

The return of money received through conference revenue sharing for its NCAA Tournament appearances from 2012-15

Requiring prospects on unofficial visits (self-paid one-day trips) to stay off-campus

Cartwright, the president emeritus of Bowling Green and Kent State universities, said the panel rejected U of L's argument focusing on the monetary value of the impermissible benefits in the case.

Instead, the panel viewed the case through the lens of health and safety for prospects and student-athletes, Cartwright said. At least seven of the prospects mentioned in the case were under the age of 18 when the violations occurred. Their names were redacted from the NCAA's documents.

"We were not persuaded by the argument that the monetary amounts were small and therefore the violations shouldn't have been seen as this severe," Cartwright said.

The ruling upset Pitino, who said he "lost a lot of faith" in the NCAA after previously feeling the opposite over "35-some-odd years."

"This is over the top," Pitino said. "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 involves a separate group of conference and school administrators and lawyers and concludes with another hearing.

Louisville has 15 days from Thursday's announcement to inform the NCAA of its intention to appeal before another months-long process begins. The appeals committee's decision is considered the final step in the infractions process.

Thursday marked exactly eight weeks from U of L's hearing in front of the Committee on Infractions panel in April in Cincinnati. It came nearly 22 months after U of L first learned of Powell's claims and started its own inquiry.

In October 2016, the NCAA charged U of L with four major allegations tied to McGee's misdeeds. That included an allegation that Rick Pitino failed to appropriately monitor McGee to uncover compliance problems.

U of L contested the allegation against Pitino (which was met with a reply from the NCAA).

The NCAA handed McGee a 10-year show-cause penalty. The former U of L guard resigned as assistant coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City shortly after Powell's book came out.

Former program assistant Brandon Williams, who is now the boys' basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High in Miami, was given a one-year show-cause penalty for not thoroughly cooperating with the NCAA.