Mitch Barnhart: ‘Louisville didn’t get enough votes’
In a Sunday night surprise, Louisville was not included in the 68-team field for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, which starts Thursday in Indiana. The Cardinals were tagged as the first “replacement team” should a member of a multi-bid league be unable to participate because of COVID-19 issues.
Kentucky Director of Athletics Mitch Barnhart serves as the chairman of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. During a press conference after the announcement of the draw on Sunday night, Barnhart said U of L’s resume was just not strong enough.
“Louisville just didn’t gather enough votes to get on the board early on,” Barnhart said. “They got the on the board, and they were there, they were under consideration. They had one Q1 win in their résumé, and they had 20 other opportunities.”
Louisville finished 13-7, but was just 1-6 against Quad 1 schools in the NCAA NET computer rankings. The Cardinals were 6-0 against Quad 2 schools, however.
“There are some pieces to that,” Barnhart said. “They didn’t have many wins against teams in the field, that were in the tournament. So it’s a combination of things. One was the timing of where they came in. Two was the Q1 wins. Three would have been the record against the tournament in the field.”
Barnhart was asked if playing just 20 games, because of two COVID-19 pauses within the program, hurt the Cardinals.
“No, I think we evaluated everyone’s resume based upon what was on it,” said the UK AD. “Clearly they had, as I think about their conference record, opportunities within their league. They played seven games in quadrant one, and all against ACC opponents, and won one of those games. They had opportunities, and just couldn’t complete enough of those to move them up the line.
“The other part is we can’t speculate about the games that have been canceled. They had two games against Syracuse that were canceled that may have told a different story. We can’t speculate about that. That’s asking us to do a lot and speculating into every situation.”
The deadline for a team to drop out of the tournament is 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Louisville decided before the draw that it would not accept an invitation to the 16-team NIT if it did not receive an NCAA Tournament bid. The NIT will be played in Texas.
Louisville Coach Chris Mack was scheduled to hold a press conference on Monday afternoon.
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 9:55 AM.
