The winning streak and the #1 ranking ended yesterday in the Yum Center as our Cards were knocked off in a tough one to a gritty Syracuse team 70-68. Cards are now 16-2 and 4-1 in the Big East. It was a great big time atmosphere with 22,814 Cards fans screaming the whole time.
After getting showered and dressed yesterday, Russ Smith was walking back into the locker room and was asked, “How long will it take you guys to get over this?” His answer, “I’m already over it.” I loved seeing this yesterday when Eric Crawford posted it on his Facebook page. I think we all got over it pretty quickly. It was tough to watch our Cards lose that number one ranking but when you put things in perspective, it really isn’t that big of a deal at all. This time last year, Louisville was coming off a difficult 74-63 loss at Marquette and was 14-5 with a 2-4 standing in the Big East. And we all know how last season finished out. The team this year is miles ahead of where that one was last year.
The Cards had several opportunities’ to finish out that game yesterday but lack of execution and missed free throws were the reason they did not. And I’m sure that all of those things were addressed in the post game meeting with Coach Pitino and the team. When a team is winning and ranked number one in the country there aren’t many opportunities for those teaching moments that coaches love. After yesterday, there will be plenty of teaching moments for Coach Pitino. The Defense looked great and the job done on that end of the floor was worthy of a victory. The Cards scored 21 points off 16 turnovers and had 12 steals. Our bench had a solid showing yesterday as well as that group scored 18 points and provided some solid minutes. It seemed like Coach Pitino used guys more than usual. He may be at the point in the season where he is going to start developing other players for the end of the season run. Russ Smith had another solid performance and was the player of the game for the Cards. He had 25 points, 4 assist and was 7-7 from the free throw line.
Time to move on from this one with another tough Big East game looming on Tuesday night as the Cards will go on the road to face Villanova. If there was, any doubt that this years Big East would not be as tough as previous seasons it was put to rest yesterday. Our loss to Cuse, USF beat Georgetown, Providence beat Nova, and Cincy took down Marquette. Yup!
