The 2021–22 Louisville Cardinals men's basketball team represented the

University of Louisville The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public university, public research university in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. Chartered in 1798 as the Jefferson Seminary, it became in the 19t ...

during the

2021–22 NCAA Division I men's basketball season The 2021–22 NCAA Division I men's basketball season began on November 9, 2021 and concluded on March 13, 2022. The 2022 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament culminated the season and began on March 15 and concluded on April 4 with the c ...

. The team played its home games on Denny Crum Court at the

KFC Yum! Center The KFC Yum! Center is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Downtown Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is named after the KFC restaurant chain and Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC. Adjacent to the Ohio River waterfront, it is located on Ma ...

in downtown Louisville, Kentucky as members of the

Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, the ACC's eighteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athlet ...

. They were led by interim head coach

Mike Pegues Mike Pegues (born January 13, 1978) is an American men's basketball coach who is currently an assistant for the Butler University Butler Bulldogs men's basketball, men's basketball team. He previously served as an assistant and then interim head ...

. The Cardinals finished the season 13–19 overall and 6–14 in ACC play to finish in a three-way tie for eleventh place. As the eleventh seed in the ACC tournament, they defeated fourteenth seed

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

in the First Round before losing to sixth seed

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

in the Second Round. Head coach Chris Mack was fired on January 26, 2022, after starting the season 11–9. Associate coach Mike Pegues was named the interim coach for the remainder of the season. On March 16, the school named former Louisville player

Kenny Payne Kenneth Victor Payne (born November 25, 1966) is an American college basketball coach and former player who is currently the associate head coach at the University of Arkansas. Previously, he was the head coach at the University of Louisville. Pr ...

the team's new head coach.

Previous season

In a

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

limited due to the ongoing

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, the

Cardinals Cardinal or The Cardinal most commonly refers to * Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of three species in the family Cardinalidae ***Northern cardinal, ''Cardinalis cardinalis'', the common cardinal of ...

finished the season 13–7, 8–5 to finish in seventh place in ACC play. They lost to

Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of Royal family, royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and above sovereign princes. As royalty or nobi ...

in the second round of the ACC tournament. They were listed as an alternate team for the NCAA tournamentshould a team be unable to participate due to COVID-19 issues. The team declined an invitation to the

National Invitation Tournament The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) is an annual men's college basketball tournament operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Since 2023, all rounds of the tournament are played at various sites across the country whi ...

prior to the NCAA Tournament field being announced. When all teams were able to participate in the opening rounds of the NCAA tournament, the Cardinals season ended.

Offseason

Suspension of Chris Mack

On August 27, 2021, the school announced that head coach Chris Mack would be suspended for the first six games of the season due to his part in an attempt by former assistant

Dino Gaudio Dino Joseph Gaudio (born March 30, 1957) is an American former men's college basketball coach and broadcaster who was most recently an assistant coach at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. Gaudio was a longtime assistant under ...

to blackmail Mack. Gaudio, who was a longtime assistant to Mack and whom Mack had let go following the completion of the 2020–21 season, had attempted to blackmail Mack with allegations of relatively minor misconduct by Mack and the team in violation of NCAA rules. The school said that Mack was being suspended for failing to follow university guidelines regarding the matter. Gaudio pled guilty to extortion for his actions in the matter.

Departures

Incoming transfers

2021 recruiting class

2022 recruiting class

Roster

Schedule and results

, - !colspan=12 style=, Exhibition , - !colspan=12 style=, Regular season , - !colspan=12 style=, ACC Tournament Schedule Source:

Rankings

*AP does not release post-NCAA tournament rankings
^Coaches did not release a Week 2 poll.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2021-22 Louisville Cardinals Men's Basketball Team Louisville Cardinals men's basketball seasons

Louisville Louisville is the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeast, and the 27th-most-populous city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's 24th-largest city; however, by populatio ...

Louisville Cardinals men's basketball The Louisville Cardinals men's basketball team is the men's college basketball program representing the University of Louisville (U of L) in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) of NCAA Division I. The Cardinals have officially won two NCAA cham ...

2021 in Louisville, Kentucky 2022 in Louisville, Kentucky