NCAA Basketball: Top 6 rivalries that were ruined by realignment

Ruined NCAA basketball rivalry No. 4 – Memphis Tigers vs Louisville Cardinals

• Louisville leads series, 53-36
• Last meeting date: 2017 (Louisville won 81-72)
• Biggest margin of victory: 29 points (Louisville won 102-73 in 1971)
• Longest win streak: 5 (twice) – Louisville both times (1949-57, ’64-70)

What’s interesting about Louisville is that their biggest rivalry in basketball would be Kentucky, which they’ve played against for years and still to this day. But since the Wildcats have always been in the SEC and the Cardinals haven’t, it wouldn’t work for this piece. But another semi-local rivalry does work with Memphis, a program, Louisville has been familiar with for decades.

These teams started playing one another in 1949 but it didn’t become a consistent series until Memphis joined Louisville in the Missouri Valley Conference in 1967. But it wasn’t until both programs ended up in the Metro Conference around the late 1970s that these matchups became battles of ranked NCAA Tournament contenders. The Cardinals won titles in ’80 and ’86, while the Tigers were making runs into the second weekend.

During that run, Memphis and Louisville were even in the win-loss record, while the Cardinals’ early edge helped give them an overall lead. But after its peak in the ’80s, Memphis moved to the  Great Midwest Conference (GMWC) and separated from Louisville. These teams eventually ended up in Conference USA for a couple of decades afterward but it never felt as it once did. The one exception was in 2005 when a missed free throw by Darius Washington cost the Tigers a trip to the NCAA Tournament in the Conference USA Tournament finals to Louisville.

After Louisville went to the Big East and eventually the ACC in this century, the games became sporadically scheduled. The last time they played was in 2017, with the Cardinals winning by nine points in New York. Hard to envision these two playing anytime soon, which is unfortunate