When a Louisville basketball team makes eight three-pointers in the first half and still trails by one at the half, that’s one tough opponent on the other side of the ball.
Villanova withstanding U of L’s best shots, making more of their own, jumping into Louisville defenders when they need fouls, splurging on defensive lapses, and mixing in a little garbage with luck along the way. Whatever it takes, skill, luck, persistence, handing Louisville an 88-74 loss.
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One was maybe expecting an injury-laden, rebounding-deprived Rick Pitino team to go into Philadelphia and shock a 14-1 team? Well, this is the University of Louisville we’re talking about and, yeah, well just maybe.
Louisville was good, very good for 20 minutes, playing as well offensively as any U of L team on the road in recent memory against an impressive opponent.
Tough on defense, too, most of the time, especially in the first half. Shame about those lapses. Just too many of them, Villanova making them pay every time it seemed. U of L just couldn’t hit enough three-point shots to overcome its defensive inadequacies.
Or the inability of Louisville’s big men to catch the ball or hit a basket with two open feet between them and the backboard.
If the Villanova players were surprised by the effort and effectiveness of the patchwork quilt of a starting unit from Louisville, they gave little indication. A good team taking care of business. Just another hard night’s work in Big East basketball.
Swopshire is out for groin surgery – so he is out for the season…..Pitino was quoted in si- “We don’t have the experience and we don’t have the overall talent that some of these teams have,’-“That doesn’t mean we can’t be there but I’d be guessing, this team is a guess.”
That statement is a weakness in my opinion.
If we don’t have the experience and the talent I would have to lay the blame on the coaching staff for lousy recruiting. I would love for Pitino to own up and actually admit we whiffed a couple of years in a row. This is not the players’ fault.
We do have a lot of weaknesses, don’t we?
Even Kyle Kuric looked uncertain at times before making those threes. No spectacular rebounds or dunks in this one.
obviously