The biggest “what ifs” in Louisville basketball and football history

What if Louisville never recruited Brian Bowen?

This is a question that I bet many people surrounding the Louisville program, including a few former employees, may ask themselves regularly.

For those of you who may have been living under a rock the last few years, Bowen was a former five-star recruit who committed and signed with Louisville back in 2017 seemingly out of nowhere.

On the commitment of Bowen, former head coach Rick Pitino put it this way:

"“We got lucky on this one. I had an AAU director call me and ask me if I’d be interested in a great player. I saw him against another great player from Indiana. I said, ‘Yeah, I’d be really interested.’ They had to come in unofficially, pay for their hotel, pay for their meals. We spent zero dollars recruiting a five-star athlete who I loved when I saw him play. In my 40 years of coaching, this is the luckiest I’ve been.”"

As we now know, Bowen would never play for the University after having his name mentioned as part of a wide-sweeping FBI Investigation into Adidas and employees who were paying players in an attempt to guide them to schools wear the multi-billion dollar business would have a better chance of signing them when they became professional athletes.

The Investigation implicated that Louisville was caught in the crosshairs offering to pay Bowen up to $100,000 for his commitment to the program, all on a federal wiretap. This ultimately led to the firing of both Rick Pitino and Tom Jurich, along with nearly the entire basketball staff, and putting Louisville in the position to ultimately be punished by the NCAA due to already being on probation from the previous scandal. To this day Rick Pitino denies having any involvement or knowing what his assistants Jordan Fair and Kenny Johnson were doing behind his back.

With the firing of Pitino, David Padgett was named the interim head coach for one full season before new athletic director, Vince Tyra, landed his first big hire in Chris Mack.

We could spend hours writing about Bowen and the entire FBI investigation, but that’s not why you’re reading. If you want that, just google Brian Bowen and you’ll instantly have thousands of articles at your fingertips.

So what if Rick Pitino and the Lousiville program would have stayed out of the Brian Bowen recruitment all-together?

I’ll start by making the obvious statement. If Rick Pitino were not let go, and Tom Jurich wouldn’t have been fired, the program looks completely different top to bottom, notably because Vince Tyra is a name we never know and Chris Mack likely isn’t the coach of the program.

We all know that the 2017 recruiting class was already super talented as is. Louisville already held commitments from four-stars Malik Williams, Darius Perry, Jordan Nwora, and Lance Thomas, and had plenty of talent returning including Deng Adel, Ray Spalding, and V.J. King. Louisville played the 2017-18 season without Bowen, and with Pitino, at the helm coaching the squad, there is no doubt that the team would have not only made the 2018 NCAA Tournament but probably could have made a nice run.

We also know that Louisville already held commitments at that time from five-star guard Anfernee Simons, who now plays for the Portland Trail Blazers, along with four-star guard Courtney Ramey. It’s also likely that Louisville would’ve ended up landing adding Romeo Langford to pair with the squad we saw take the court this past season (assuming they all stayed).

Both 2017-18 and 2018-19 probably end a little bit different, but probably not much.

But overall, the program still has dark clouds hanging over it. Until Rick Pitino was fired or walked away under his own cognition, UofL was always going to be viewed as a program who didn’t do things the right way.

Many called for Jurich to fire Rick Pitino after his infidelity led to a scandal including blackmail. And those who didn’t call for him after that, certainly pushed for him to be fired after the Katina Powell mishap that ended with Louisville’s 2013 National Title being vacated.

With external pressure on the University and a soon to be new president bringing in her own way of doing things, there’s no doubt that one slip up or wrong move from Rick Pitino would have led to his ousting. Would it have been in 2018 or much later, who knows? But if Pitino stays, it diminishes the likelihood of Chris Mack ever becoming the coach, thus pushing back a new era for several more seasons.

Either way, without even getting into the Bowen chase, it saves Louisville from ever being implicated in an FBI investigation, especially on probation, while keeping the program budding in the ACC at the right time.

There are countless instances that kept Cards fans up at night after a brutal loss or a tough break. These are just some of the more thought-provoking plays and conundrums that could have totally changed the course of Louisville athletics.

Still, there are always games and plays in which Louisville came out on the positive side of things. What if Darius Washington makes two free throws and sends Memphis to the NCAA tournament in 2005? What if Trey Burke’s block on Peyton Siva isn’t called a foul in the 2013 national title game? What if Tim Henderson doesn’t sink those two threes against Wichita State? What if Louisville doesn’t keep Kentucky out of a bowl game in two consecutive seasons?

Every team has their “what ifs” that could alter their trajectory forever. So, I’ll leave you with this: What if this is all happening for a reason?