Louisville Coach Rick Pitino may be preparing for eight-seeded North Carolina State, but it didn't stop him from having dinner with Jim Boeheim.
Pitino also defended the Syracuse coach, who was recently penalized by the NCAA for a series of rules violations.
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“There’s not an ounce in him that would ever break the rules knowingly,” Pitino said via the New York Times. “He is a man of great integrity and sometimes, in today’s culture, anything can happen.”
Earlier this month, the NCAA announced that Boeheim would be suspended nine ACC games next season and his team will lose 12 scholarships over the course of four years in the wake of a multi-year investigation into the program. The school previously self-imposed a postseason ban for this year that kept the team out of the ACC and NCAA tournaments.
Pitino also took the opportunity to chastise the NCAA for taking eight years to complete the investigation against his coaching colleague.
“Look, we want to keep our game regulated the right way, but not in an eight-year time span,” Pitino said, according to the New York Times. “Hire more people. We’ve got a lot of money from March Madness. Hire more people and get the job done in a shorter period of time.”
Boeheim, 70, will enter next season with a career record of 858-333. He lost 108 coaching victories as part of the NCAA's penalties. He now ranks sixth on NCAA's all-time wins list.