Louisville Wants Ban Lifted

Louisville’s president and athletic director went before an NCAA appeals committee Friday in Phoenix seeking to reverse the school’s ban from postseason basketball play.

President John Shumaker said that in the hearing before the four-member Infractions Appeals Committee the school argued the postseason ban was excessive punishment.

“I think the discussion was very good, very enlightening, but I can’t predict what the outcome will be,” Shumaker said after the four-hour hearing at a resort hotel.

Shumaker said he expects a decision in the next few weeks.

Louisville was given a three-year probation last year by the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions for two violations by former assistant coach Scooter McCray, who was reassigned within the athletic department last summer.

*

The legislation approved by the NCAA Division I Board of Directors last week will permit schools to participate in a maximum of 28 regular-season games but did not eliminate the certified events such as tournaments in Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico or the Preseason NIT. In a clarification to the legislation approved Jan. 12, the NCAA said the new rule eliminates the exemption to the maximum number of regular-season games, not the events. For example, teams that played in this season’s Maui Invitational, Great Alaska Shootout, Puerto Rico Shootout or Preseason NIT did not have to count games played in those events toward their regular-season limit of 27. . . . Kansas forward Lester Earl will have another year of eligibility after winning an appeal of his original letter of intent to play at Louisiana State.