If Louisville the city can feel overlooked in favor of more prominent islands in the hipster archipelago dotting the country, Louisville the basketball program has its own overshadowing rival much closer to home: the Kentucky Wildcats. Kentucky’s men’s program has the most Division I wins in history, and a fan base that will not let anyone around here forget it.

This was the first time in nine seasons that neither Louisville nor Kentucky had made the N.C.A.A. tournament’s second weekend, and Kentucky was the one with the better excuse: It lost.

“A lot of fans are as equally relieved that the archrival is out of the tournament,” Benz said. To prove his point, he noted that many residents of this city just across the Ohio River from Indiana give their secondary allegiance to the Hoosiers, who eliminated Kentucky last Sunday.

Even so, the Louisville scandal’s unsavory nature and the accusation that it involved cheating in recruiting has caused soul-searching among Cardinals fans. They had felt that between their program and Kentucky’s — whose coach, John Calipari, has had Final Four runs at two of his previous stops vacated by the N.C.A.A. — theirs was the clean one.

“Since Cal got there, there has been a sense that we did it the right way,” Yarmuth said, adding, “Now we don’t have that to stand on.”

Pitino has denied involvement in, and knowledge of, the parties, which were said to have been arranged by a former Louisville staff member and player, Andre McGee. Many people here expect Pitino to survive the scandal. Instead, anger over the mess has flared out in multiple directions, with the N.C.A.A. an obvious target of Louisville fans.