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

Jeff Greer , @jeffgreer_cjPublished 9:15 a.m. ET June 15, 2017 | Updated 0 minutes ago

A timeline of the U of L NCAA allegations. Mary Ann Gerth/Courier-Journal

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Correction: A previous version of 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.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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

The NCAA also hit Louisville with what it described as "a vacation of basketball records in which student-athletes competed while ineligible" from December 2010 to July 2014.

"The university will provide a written report containing the games impacted (by the vacation of records)," the NCAA's statement said, "to the NCAA media coordination and statistics staff within 45 days of the public decision release."

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

Smrt called the ruling "severe" and said it "exceeded our expectations."

In a statement from interim U of L president Greg Postel, the school announced that it would appeal what it called "excessive" NCAA penalties.

"The entire U of L community is saddened by what took place," Postel's statement 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

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Timeline:How Louisville got here

U of L also received a $5,000 fine and must return money received from conference revenue sharing from 2012-15 NCAA Tournament appearances.

"The panel also accepted the university’s self-imposed 2015-16 postseason ban," the release said.

Carol Cartwright, the president emeritus of Bowling Green and Kent State and chief hearing officer for the NCAA's Committee on Infractions panel for U of L's case, said the panel rejected U of L's argument focusing on the monetary value of the impermissible benefits in the case.

Cartwright said the panel instead considered the safety and well-being of the student-athletes involved to determine its ruling.

"For 35-some-odd years I've had a lot of faith in the NCAA," Pitino said. "... Personally I've lost a lot of faith in the NCAA with what they just did. ... This is over the top. 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 could take up to three months, according to Smrt. U of L has 15 days to inform the NCAA that it will appeal the decision and then 30 days to file its actual appeal documents.

The ruling from the NCAA 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 for dances and sex on behalf of U of L players and recruits.

The subsequent U of L investigation resulted in the school self-imposing penalties that included a postseason ban for the 2015-16 team.

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), and the case went before the NCAA Committee on Infractions during a meeting in April in Cincinnati