Alright, forgive me for thinking you were referring to men's hoops and not women's softball. Good grief.
How is it revisionist history? We weren't "put" anywhere. The Catholic schools formed their own league and we were left in the "Big East" which was the same entity that became the AAC.
Football wasn't in such bad shape at the time of the Louisville decision either - we were in the tail end of consecutive 5-7 seasons and had beaten a ranked Louisville team at their place a few days before the decision was made. Louisville had the better program and that's obviously why they were selected and thus why we remained in the AAC.
KO tanked the hoop program way more than the AAC did. I'm happy to be back in the Big East but whether we had an FBS program or not, this league was always a fallback destination to the ACC (or any other P5), whether it was a couple years or ten years ago it doesn't change where we ended up.