damn can't wait to see 'em play wvu. Huggy Bear vs. BearCats... pretty sweet storyline. The Big East games today should be fun to watch.
Stressful, but fun game to watch last night. In the first half it looked like UC would just roll over. The second half was a cobination of not so good basketball by UofL and great effort by UC. Gates actually appeared to care and UC dominated the boards. Players were flying around and scrambling for loose balls. There was a lot more slashing to the basket and agressiveness that hasn't really shown up a whole lot this season. Wilks has had a couple good games now and just seems to be a spark plug for the team.
Shooting was still a concern last night, but you would hope that UC can gain some confidence and shoot better. They will definately have to shoot better against WVU. Should be a great game tonight.
Good win for UC.
But the same thing that concerns me about Cronin didn't go away. First of all Stephenson gets called for a carry around the 6 minute mark in the 1st half and sits the rest of the half. At around the 5 minute mark Mick put a lineup on the floor, for a couple of minutes, of Dixon-Davis-Wright-Thomas-McClain. You CAN'T do that in major college basketball. UC is lucky UL didn't rip off a 6-0 or 8-0 run and extend the half time lead to 18 and put the game away.
Some of my thoughts from the first half.
-Awful charge call on Gates.
-Jay Bilas quote of the night "Larry Davis hasn't made a shot in a long time"
-Lance is a play maker. He gets over excited at times but is the best UC has.
-Thomas has the worst hands I have ever seen.
-Edgar Sosa may be my most hated college player in a long, long time.
-Wilks had another good 1st half, don't know whether to be excited or afraid.
I realize that UC has to play in back to back to back nights, but these college players should be in tip top shape. What worries me is the amount of time Mick gives to either role players or non-Big East players.
Thomas - 17 min
Parker - 28 min
Davis - 9 min
In what college basketball world does Parker get the same amount of minutes as Stephenson?
The time is at hand once more, one of the only times I ever cheer for the Bearcats: when they play WVU. Go get 'em, UC.
Louisville fans feel the same way about Sosa. It is really humorous to hear national commentators rave about Sosa while the local guys who see him every game have very little to say that is positive. I realize that UofL is not a high profile team this year so most people around the nation don't watch them but describing Sosa as a great (or even good) player is laughable.
Sosa and Delk were hot which enabled them to overcome a large rebounding deficit at the half. When those guys went cold UofL went for nearly 10 minutes without a field goal. When you look at the "effort" stats (rebounding, steals, etc), UofL was very lackadaisical for the entire game even though they shot a decent percentage.
In the end, it doesn't matter. Good luck with WVU.
I don't think it will matter. Louisville isn't very good this year, and it was going to take a pretty huge upset to get out of Round 2 anyway. The only difference is that they're going to have a little tougher time getting out of Round 1 now. Louisville wasn't/isn't a serious threat to make a deep run either way.
UL is a team with a lot of finesse. From what I have seen they love the 3 pointer (Pitino's teams always have loved the 3) but don't have the play makers and post men to make a run in the tourney. Samuels is good, but is really their only option inside.
That said UL can be dangerous if they go nuts from the outside. All you have to do is look at the UL Syracuse game and see what CAN happen. Granted it would be one heck of a run to do it for more than 1 game in a row. I am assuming they will get a seed in which they will need to bring their A game from the start.
This has been the mantra of Louisville fans all year but when you look at potential tourney teams they've beaten it tells a different story. Aside from Syracuse, they've beaten Notre Dame without Harangody. That is only three wins against teams that will make the tournament as an at large. The Syracuse wins were great but I think that is more a sign of a good match-up for Louisville than it is a good team. Other than that they came close to beating WVU and Pitt while losing big to St. Johns, Georgetown, and Marquette.
I think this is where perception of ESPN and the national media fails to meet reality. While last years team was tenacious on defense, this years team is awful. They rank 77th in defensive efficiency and Pitino has changed the press this year to make it easier on the players which in turn results in fewer turnovers and more fast break points for their opponents. They rank 187th in 3 point field goal percentage at 33.9%.
Now, they are capable of putting it together for short stretches but poor defense and their love for 3 point shooting has been their achilles heel all year.
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