Rick Pitino OK with selection committee's Louisville jab? ... right

ORLANDO, Fla. - Rick Pitino has the podium ladies and gentlemen. Before we go any further, he doesn't care about Louisville's seeding in the NCAA Tournament.

Really, he doesn't.

'Sometimes when people say you fit the eye test, it depends on who's looking at it,' Pitino said. 'If you have a bunch of football ADs looking at it, how would they know what the eye test is?'

See what I mean?

He absolutely doesn't care his defending national champions, who are playing as well or better than any team in the country not only were awarded a No. 4 seed - not a coveted top seed - but were placed in a bracket with a potential regional semifinal matchup against a bitter rival.

Pitino doesn't care that his team, which won 13 of its last 14; that won its last five games (three against ranked teams) by a combined 146 points was placed a pod against dangerous Manhattan team whose coach, Steve Masiello, is a longtime Pitino assistant who knows where all the bodies are buried.

And if the Cardinals get out of Orlando and advance to Indianapolis in the Midwest Region - voila! -Kentucky could be waiting in the Round of 16. The same Big Blue that Pitino coached to a national championship long ago before leaving for the NBA and eventually returning years to coach UK's bitter rival.

MORE: Coaches who've been there, done that

Like the committee would do that with Duke and North Carolina. Like it or not, it's the selection committee gift that keeps on giving.

'Not beating around the bush, but we dominated our last few weeks of basketball,' said Louisville guard Russ Smith. 'Winning by 20 or 30 or 50.'

For that, the defending national champions were given a stiff gut-punch as a parting gift. Though truth be told, you can't swing a bag of cats without hitting a former Pitino assistant in the tournament field (there are five).

'You know, (Cal-State Northridge coach) Reggie Theus had a tough call, or it would have been one more,' Pitino said.

Imagine then what the selection committee could have done.

There's this annual thought process that the committee has a sense of humor; that some matchups are based on potential storylines to push television numbers. If you don't think that happens every single year, you may as well believe Pitino doesn't care about his seeding, either.

Of course he's fine with facing a coach in the first game of the tournament who he coached at Kentucky; who was his ball boy with the New York Knicks; who was his assistant for years; who now has his own experienced, dangerous team. A coach who knows every single Louisville offensive set, every defensive press, every in-bound play.

Those football ADs sure do have a sense of humor.

Every once in a while, Pitino asks Louisville publicity man Kenny Klein how the Louisville football team looks, and over the years has strolled out to the practice fields and watched Teddy Bridgewater throw darts all over the joint.

'(Klein) would take me to practice and say, 'What do you think, coach?' ' Pitino said. 'I'd say, I have no idea what I'm looking at. So it all depends on depends on who's looking at the eye test. Maybe they're a bunch of soccer ADs.'

Whoever it is, they're seeing the same thing.

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