The NCAA Tournament selection committee isn’t stupid, so when it pitted Minnesota against Louisville in the Round of 64, it knew exactly what it was doing.

Richard Pitino will coach against the team where he used to be an assistant coach under his father Rick Pitino. You know, the university Rick Pitino is suing for $40 million after being terminated in the wake of links to scandals in college basketball.

In case the ratings for the first college basketball game of the NCAA Tournament weren’t going to be high enough, the selection committee provided one more interesting reason to watch that early afternoon matchup.

Minnesota and Louisville will square off in the first game of the Round of 64 on Thursday, with tipoff scheduled for 12:15 p.m. ET and the game being aired on CBS. The opener to March Madness also provides one of the juicier storylines.

But Richard Pitino isn’t viewing the matchup in that light. Thursday’s game isn’t about “revenge” or the past. It’s about this Minnesota team, and having an opportunity to advance to the next round.

“It’s not going to be about me; I’m not going to make that about me,” Richard Pitino said, according to TwinCities.com. “I’m not going to be, ‘Oh, it’s revenge,’ or anything like that. It’s about our players and it’s about this program. We worked really, really hard to put us in a position to be one of the 19 percent that gets to make the NCAA Tournament in college basketball. That’s what it’s going to be about.”

The Gophers finished the season with a  21-13 record, including wins over Penn State and Purdue in the B1G Tournament. For most of February and early March, Minnesota was considered a bubble team.

Now that the Gophers are in the field, thanks in large part to efforts from Jordan Murphy and Amir Coffey playing significant minutes down the stretch, Richard Pitino wants the focus to be on his team, not the situation with Louisville.

“Some great memories. Some tough memories. Being an assistant coach there…didn’t end well, which is very unfortunate,” Richard Pitino said. “To me, the story here is about our players and our program and the adversity that they fought through.”