Louisville basketball pushes limits to honor 2013 team, players

Louisville basketball will recognize the Final Four Most Outstanding Player Awards given to its three recipients from Cardinals’ 1980, 1986, and 2013 national title teams.

Nearly two years after being forced to remove its NCAA national championship banner from the KFC Yum! Center, Louisville basketball will recognize at least a small part of its most recent national championship team.

In a statement released by The University of Louisville on Tuesday, the school announced that it will be honoring its three award recipients at halftime of their December 3rd match-up with Michigan.

"Former Cardinal greats Darrell Griffith (1980), Pervis Ellison (1986) and Luke Hancock (2013) will have their names celebrated on a new banner to be hung in the southeast rafters of the Cardinals’ home arena, where additional individual honors are displayed to highlight the outstanding UofL Basketball tradition.  Griffith and Ellison both have their numbers retired at UofL and have banners already in place with their images.“Our legacy of championship basketball includes many great teams and individual players,” said Vince Tyra, UofL Vice President and Director of Athletics.  “This is an opportunity for the university to permanently recognize, and show our appreciation for, the achievements of three former greats who pushed themselves and their team to the highest level of play.  Our fans and their teams will never forget their success nor their teams’ success.”Griffith and Hancock will be in attendance for the unveiling and will speak at halftime.  Ellison, who is currently coaching, has a commitment that evening and is unable to attend."

For Louisville, it is the first time that the university has publicly acknowledged the 2013 national title team in any way since the NCAA ruled that over 100 wins, two final fours, and a national title along with the statistics of the participating players on those teams be stricken from the record books following a pay for play scandal involving exotic dancers.

In the fall of 2018, Hancock and four other teammates- Gorgui Dieng, Tim Henderson, Stephen Van Treese, and Mike Marra- filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA and lawyered up with heavy hitter John Morgan. Though the players did not get what they ultimately set out for- reinstatement of the 2013 national title- all of the statistics that they recorded over that time were restored.

For Hancock, that meant the restoration of his 2013 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Award. Though the NCAA still will not recognize Louisville as the champion, they acknowledge Hancock’s accomplishments- which in essence could be viewed as the governing body of college athletics still conceding that the Cardinals were the ultimate victors.

Still, Louisville is doing its best to recognize Hancock while skirting around the issue at hand. It is doing so in a creative way by recognizing Griffith and Ellison- perhaps the school’s two greatest players ever- alongside Hancock.

Here’s what UofL had to say regarding Hancock’s accomplishments:

"Hancock was honored as the Most Outstanding Player of the 2013 NCAA Final Four, the first non-starter to earn the honor in the event’s history.  He did much of his damage beyond the arc, connecting on a Final Four record tying 8-of-10 three-pointers in the two games.  In the national championship game against Michigan, he totaled 22 points, three assists and two steals, hitting all five of his three-point attempts, a Final Four record for three-point percentage. He had 20 points and four rebounds against Wichita State in the national semifinals, burying 3-of-5 threes."

It’s also no strange coincidence that Hancock will be honored at halftime against Michigan, the same school that Louisville defeated in the 2013 title game, in their second meeting since the Cards won it all.

Those involved on the losing end harbor no ill-will towards the Cards. Former Michigan head coach John Beilein said he still sees that Michigan team as the national runner-ups:

"“We didn’t win it all. We lost to a great team. If someone else wants to come and say ‘hey, you won it all, you’re the champion.’ We’ll take it,” Beilein said. “But I’m not going to declare that. I’m declaring that we played our tail off that entire year and got every bit out of what was, remember, a really young team. Freshmen and sophomores all over the place.  That was a great basketball team.”"

Still, it will be a tribute to a great team and players who represented the University of Louisville at the highest level.

Though Beilein left the Wolverines for the Cleveland Cavaliers in the offseason, Michigan still brings a fringe top 25 squad to Louisville, led by first-year head coach Juwan Howard. They will bring a unique challenge for the Cards in front of what will likely be a lively prime-time crowd.

The night will be about the Cards and the Wolverines, but intuition tells one that Hancock and Louisville basketball’s past champions may steal the show.