2013 Louisville national championship (later vacated)

The University of Louisville defeated Michigan in the 2013 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game on April 8, 2013, and celebrated the program's claim to the national title. Subsequent investigations into impermissible benefits involving recruits and players led to NCAA enforcement actions and internal reviews of the program's conduct during the Pitino era [12]. The NCAA ultimately required Louisville to vacate the 2013 championship and to remove related wins from official records; the vacatur was upheld by the NCAA and reported as definitive on February 20, 2018 in summaries of the ruling [12]. The vacated championship changed how record books and media outlets list Louisville's accomplishments from that season, and institutional statements and coverage documented the shift from recognized titleholder to vacated result [12]. The enforcement actions grew out of broader probes into college basketball and specific allegations tied to the program's recruiting and player benefit practices during the early 2010s [12].

The vacatur directly affected how Louisville's peak achievement under Rick Pitino is recorded and remembered and inserted institutional-scandal themes into the rivalry's modern narrative. For Kentucky–Louisville watchers, the vacated title complicates head-to-head comparisons and the legacy of on-court outcomes in the 2010s, because one program's national championship from that era no longer appears in official NCAA records [12].

The NCAA ruling contributed to increased scrutiny of Louisville's program management and overlapped with subsequent institutional consequences, including personnel changes and further investigations that culminated in the 2017 federal probe and Pitino's eventual firing [6][2][12]. The vacatur also influenced public perception, alumni reactions, and historical accounts of the rivalry's 2010s period.