LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- When I read the first sentence of the University of Louisville’s latest response to the school’s 4 1/2-year dance with the NCAA over its basketball recruiting scandal, one conclusion was as clear as a breakaway layup:
This is the University of Kansas strategy.
Play the victim card. Concede nothing. Downplay everything. Deliver the necessary cooperation. Claim inadvertent mistakes. Keep moving forward. Get a resolution as quickly as possible.
These are the first 13 words of Louisville’s mammoth response to the NCAA’s Complex Case Unit’s Amended Notice of Allegations:
“This case arose out of a conspiracy to defraud the University of Louisville."
You want to know the name of another school that shrugged its shoulders and pointed a finger at Adidas as the primary weasel in the case commonly know as the “Pay for Play,” scandal.
Kansas, that’s who.
You want to know the program that is my favorite to win the 2022 NCAA men’s tournament next weekend in New Orleans?
Kansas, that’s who.
You want to know the program that has never backed up a millimeter in its hissing contest with the NCAA?
Kansas, that’s who.
You want to know know the program that gave its head coach a lifetime contract during a stretch where Louisville has had five head coaches and not won an NCAA Tournament game?
Kansas and Bill Self, that’s who.
The backdrop of Kansas marching defiantly into the Final Four with all the nonsense around the Jayhawks’ program should be the talk of college basketball.
But it isn’t.
Mike Krzyzewski trying to win his sixth NCAA title in his final season at Duke is story No. 1. North Carolina trying to stop its fierce rival and ruin Coach K’s farewell, the way the Tar Heels ruined his farewell game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, for first-year coach Hubert Davis is story No. 2.
(Let’s take a timeout here to note that Kansas is not the only 2022 Final Four program tied to preposterous behavior. Reasonable people have plenty of questions about how Duke won the Zion Williamson recruiting sweepstakes. And, in 2017, North Carolina stared down and beat the NCAA over its fake classes academic scandal.)
Villanova trying to overcome the loss of its second-best player to an Achilles’ tendon injury while chasing Jay Wright’s third championship in seven seasons is story No.3
Then there is Kansas.
If you’re CBS or Turner Sports, you won’t say anything, not a single discouraging word all weekend.
You’ll exalt Self as one of college basketball’s premier coaches, the most unflappable coach in the game. You’re going to talk about how the Jayhawks fought their way through the Big 12, perhaps the toughest conference in the game.
You’re certainly going to mention the remarkable turnaround the Jayhawks have made since Jan. 29 when John Calipari’s Kentucky team ran Kansas out of Allen Fieldhouse. But the Jayhawks’ role in the scandal that has resulted in at least three head coaches (Rick Pitino of Louisville, Sean Miller of Arizona and Will Wade of Louisiana State) and a string of assistant coaches losing their jobs?
The NCAA's Independent Accountability Resolution process has thrown another couple of logs on the pyre — excuse me, fire — of the University of Louisville's stack of allegations to be adjudicated at some uncertain point in the probably distant future.
The folks at CBS and Turner are more likely to talk about crabgrass at Augusta National Golf Course than say a discouraging word about a program that will strut into the Caesars Superdome this weekend.
This is a different strategy than Louisville used in its last battle with the NCAA. It’s also a different set of attorneys calling plays for the Cardinals.
The school switched from a firm led by former Indiana University backup defensive lineman Chuck Smrt to one directed by former Indiana University backup quarterback Mike Glazier.
The same Mike Glazier who once worked for the NCAA.
The same Mike Glazier who is comfortable debating the NCAA on every punctuation mark.
The same Mike Glazier who represents Final Four-bound Kansas, which claimed that anything Adidas did to assist Self’s program was done to further the interests of the apparel company, not Jayhawks’ basketball.
It’s a strategy best executed by grabbing pom-poms and shaking them a few times.
For Louisville, the recruit in questions was Brian Bowen II, who committed to the Cardinals in the summer of 2017 in a miraculous moment when a scholarship opened after Donovan Mitchell announced he was leaving for the NBA.
Like most five-star recruits, Bowen closed his eyes and called Louisville out of the blue and offered his considerable talents.
Louisville’s argument remains that it was unaware that former Adidas executives Merl Code and Jim Gatto were working with player agent Christian Dawkins to funnel $100,000 to Bowen’s father to get the player to Louisville.
Thus, the fraudulent behavior — although previous U of L administrators apparently had enough questions that they dismissed Pitino, two of his assistants and athletic director Tom Jurich.
Code wrote a book about his experience with Adidas, recruiting, coaching staffs, the NCAA and the legal system. He gave it the title: “Black Market: An Insider’s Journey Into the High Stakes World of College Basketball.”
Former U of L recruit Brian Bowen is likely at the center of the latest notice of infractions the school received from the NCAA.
When you read sections where Code addressed his alleged fraudulent behavior, you can hear him chuckling. Passages like this one, concerning the recruitment of Brian Bowen II:
“The gist of the prosecution was that, as it related to me, my actions made Brian Bowen ineligible, thus defrauding the University of Louisville. As a consultant with Adidas, I did not act on my own, nor could I have done so. I simply ran the proposition by my bosses, who did the same after consulting with Rick Pitino, and the answer that came back from up high was, ‘Rick wants our help. Get it done.’ ”
Somehow, it got done. Bowen signed with Louisville even though he never played a single possession for the Cards, drifting away to a professional basketball odyssey that saw him waived by the mighty Iowa Wolves of the NBA G-League less than three weeks ago.
And so it goes. Louisville will push back against the allegations involved in the recruitment of Bowen. They will also push back on the additional violations that occurred under former coach Chris Mack, violations that concerned how graduate managers were used in practice as well as the creation of recruiting hype videos.
The school is prepared to argue those violations were limited and that they were the result of ambiguity and good-faith misunderstanding of the rules. They want those violations downgraded from Level II to Level III.
They want leniency. And with new coach Kenny Payne on board, the program wants (and deserves) a resolution as quickly as possible. It’s time to move forward.
For Louisville, this time the pushback to the NCAA is firm — just the way Kansas pushed back and then powered its way to the 2022 Final Four.
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- Louisville's NCAA infractions case will move to new resolution process
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