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NCAA committee hears final Louisville appeal as they try to keep title banner

Cleveland State v Louisville

LOUISVILLE, KY - NOVEMBER 26: Rick Pitino the head coach of the Louisville Cardinals is presented with a game ball by athletic director Tom Jurich after the game against the Cleveland State Vikings at KFC YUM! Center on November 26, 2014 in Louisville, Kentucky. With tonights 45-33 win Pitino won his 700th careercollegiate game. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

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Louisville had their final day in court on Wednesday, as they made a last-ditch appeal to the NCAA Infractions Committee to try and save their 2012 Final Four and 2013 National Title.

Neither Rick Pitino nor Tom Jurich, who were both fired by Louisville in the wake of this fall’s FBI investigation into corruption in college basketball, were in attendance.

An interim president and interim athletic director were present for the University as they tried to push back against the ruling the NCAA came down with this summer. If you’ve forgotten: The Cardinals were hit with a slew of recruiting restrictions, currently sit on probation and must pay back a bunch of money they won in forfeited NCAA tournament games due to a former staffer’s efforts to provide strippers and sex workers to players and recruits over the course of four years. The vacated wins are the result of players that were retroactively ruled ineligible for receiving what the NCAA is deeming impermissible benefits participating in those games.

Louisville also initially self-imposed violations, including a 2016 postseason ban that was implemented in February of that year.

Jeff Greer of the Louisville Courier-Journal has all the details here, but we know what the story is at this point.

Louisville’s argument is centered around the money. Essentially, they are saying that value of the transactions in question - the amount of money that was spent by former assistant Andre McGee - was small enough that the players involved would have been able to pay back what was owed had the violations been discovered in real time. The NCAA’s argument is even simpler: We’ve never seen something like this, so precedence does not matter in this case.

A final ruling is not expected until at least January.