LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Several years ago, when the University of Louisville sought to put up some kind of public memorial of its vacated 2013 NCAA men's basketball season, the answer from the NCAA was no.

This year, when athletics director Josh Heird put in a request to do the same thing, with the appeal that the players on the team "were part of something very special ... and should be remembered for the great memories they provided and helped to create for so many," he was a little surprised when the answer from the NCAA was, "Your request is approved."

That's how the school received permission to hang a banner that reads, "2013 Final Coaches Poll #1."

"To be honest, I expected the answer to be a pretty quick, 'No,'" Heird said of his request.

Instead, on Saturday night when Louisville faces Clemson in the KFC Yum! Center, the school will hold an event it calls a "2013 team recognition." You'll hear no mention of championships. But you will see most of the players from that team with only a couple of absences.

The NCAA laid down strict guidelines for the university as part of its sanctions in the school's Katina Powell sex-for-recruits scandal. Wins were vacated. Records were blotted out. A 2019 lawsuit from Luke Hancock restored his standing as 2013 Final Four Most Outstanding Player.

The NCAA takes this seriously.

"In case you're wondering if the NCAA is watching," Heird said before sitting down to talk with WDRB on Monday. "They are."

And in giving U of L permission to hoist this new banner, it said in a response to Heird that the approval was "narrow and limited to the specific 'banner' request in your letter. Louisville should exercise caution in how it reveals the banner. The banner and any logistics and events around its unveiling must continue to comply with the vacation of records penalty."

U of L had to come up with wording on the banner that was purely factual and did not refer to the NCAA or any kind of championship. It considered a banner that simply said, "2013," but the NCAA said that implied a championship, because it would be hung next to championship banners. Nor is Louisville allowed to refer to the championship, any specific wins or losses or stats or records, either publicly or privately with the players who will gather.

"Nothing about this is ideal," Heird said. "But it is a step in the right direction. My goal with that letter (to the NCAA) was to try to do something that would recognize the achievements of that team. I don't think we're recognizing them to the level that any of us want, but we were given permission to recognize them. ... Is that where we want to be? No. I would absolutely love to have a banner that says, '2013 NCAA champions,' but, unfortunately, that was one of the penalties through the NCAA process that they said, 'You can't do that.' ... But this does mean something. Look at the reaction from our fans. This is a highly emotional topic, because our fans want this team recognized. So, that's what we were trying to get accomplished here."

Heird said he was happy that the NCAA agreed to let Louisville recognize the players but that there wasn't much celebrating over it. Nobody is happy with the situation. Louisville respects the sanctions that the NCAA handed down, he said, and isn't trying to flaunt them.

"There were a few moments that felt pretty good, because we get to recognize this team and the individuals on this team," Heird said. "... As I drafted the correspondence, I guess you could call it one piece of hope that I had is that the NCAA has been pretty intentional that they're trying a lot harder not to take away things from student-athletes, especially student-athletes that weren't necessarily directly involved in situations. So, I do think that resonated with the committee."

The banner is a powerful symbol, of course, and one that is important to fans. At WKU, they hang a banner from a vacated 1971 Final Four appearance. So does Villanova. The NCAA, however, didn't begin to mandate the vacating of actual records until 1990, which is when it began mandating that banners be removed.

And lest anyone ask, "what's the worst the NCAA could do?" should Louisville go further than the NCAA allowed in this narrow permission, Heird's understanding from the NCAA is that it could do quite a bit. A willful fainting of an order to vacate could conceivably be viewed as a Level I violation by the NCAA's committee on infractions.

"We have to be really cognizant of the institution that we're a member of, and that's the NCAA," Heird said. "I would love for us to have something different up there on Saturday. But they made it very clear to me that yes, we could be back in front of the committee on infractions if we did something, and I have made it very clear from day one, that we are going to operate with one of our main objectives to be making sure we're never in front of committee on infractions. We're not going to be blatantly doing things that put this university or this athletic department in in a difficult or a bad situation."

The NCAA, as Heird said, will be watching.

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