Louisville Cardinals Crossing Fingers for March Madness Seed
Louisville, Kentucky, is home of the University of Louisville where the Cardinals men’s basketball program has a long and outstanding history. To date, the team has earned the NCAA Championship Title in 1980 and 1986, and have played in the final four tournaments during 8 different seasons.
Men’s college basketball for the Cardinals has had a rough 2017-2018 season amidst investigations of a scandal that college coaches and scouts offered illegal benefits to college basketball players. Due to the investigations head coach Rick Pitino and others were placed on leave September of 2017. Taking the reins of the team, David Padgett, a previous player and alumni for the University of Louisville has acted as interim head coach this season. He has been working under Pitino in various assistant head coach positions since the 2014 season. Padgett has brought the team to a 20-13 overall record so far this season. Speculation surrounds this team as to whether or not their record is good enough to compete in the March Madness tournament this year.
Earlier this week Louisville had an 82-74 win over Florida State and was hopefully going into their game versus number 1 team Virginia with some positive energy to keep them hyped. Unfortunately, Louisville came up short to Virginia today in the game they badly needed to win to secure a standing in the bracket. This season has been a bumpy one from the start and with a current standing of an 11 seed in the March Madness bracket, Louisville is definitely nervous come Sunday when the official selections are released.
Selection Sunday Show airs on Sunday, March 11th on TBS at 6 pm Eastern Standard Time where the final 69 teams will be announced that earned a right to compete in the 2018 NCAA National Championship Tournament. Last years winner, the North Carolina Tar Heels beat the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the Championship game 71-65. This year the Tar Heels are ranked 12th in the AP polls with Virginia, Villanova, Xavier and Michigan State pulling in at the top four. Louisville is ranked 9th in their division, and not ranked overall this season.
A neighboring rival, Kentucky was ranked twenty-three last week overall and has a much better shot at playing in the tournament this year. The bad news for the Wildcats is that due to the recent injury of Vanderbilt, Kentucky has fallen out of the top twenty-five rankings for now. Coach Calipari, the University of Kentucky head coach, is receiving the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Metropolitan Award presented by Nike during the Final Four tournament this season in San Antonio, Texas. He has an overall record of 264-60 during his career thus far.
