With seven regular season games remaining on the schedule in mid-February, Rick Pitino called on his team to win them all. The Cardinals had just lost a demoralizing five-overtime road game to Notre Dame, capping a precipitous three-week fall that saw his team lose four of seven games and drop from #1 in the country all the way out of the top-10. While the Cardinals’ bout with the Irish was heralded by some as the game of the year for its suspense and intensity, Louisville fans shook their heads in resignation after their team choked away an eight-point lead in the final 45 seconds. The team hyped as the strongest national title contender in the Pitino era at Louisville couldn’t seem to generate enough offense outside of Russ Smith, couldn’t seem to generate the fast breaks it desperately needed, and couldn’t seem to close out games.

Chane Behanan was Montrezl Harrell’s biggest fan last Saturday, watching from the bench (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

So Pitino made an improbable request, and his team obliged. They built momentum by overwhelming St. John’s, Seton Hall, and DePaul; they subdued arch-rival Cincinnati and achieved redemption against Syracuse and Notre Dame. All the while, their glaring weaknesses slowly gave way to the singular strengths befitting a preseason consensus Final Four pick. The Cardinals’ backcourt, the sum of whose parts had yet to coalesce, came into form once Kevin Ware began playing extended stints at point guard, as he forced turnovers on defense and relieved Russ Smith of the fatigue of ball-handling duties while Peyton Siva was on the bench. Luke Hancock, the embattled James Madison transfer whose rusty early play drew groans even from press row in non-conference home games, quietly developed into a consistent 37% three-point marksman as his ailing shoulder strengthened. Gorgui Dieng fashioned himself into the Big East’s leading rebounder in conference play and proved he could still hit an elbow jumper despite the brace on his left wrist. All the while, the Cards forced opposing defenses to stretch ever further, opening driving opportunities for Siva after months of being thwarted by aggressive hedging and dense zones. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday’s flurry of bid snatching wound down out West and left us with a near-complete picture of the puzzle. Just four automatic bids remain to be earned on Selection Sunday. As we have for each of the 31 automatic qualifiers to play their way into the Dance, we’ll take some time to give you an analytical snapshot of each team that you can refer back to when you’re picking your brackets this week.

Akron

Zeke Marshall And Akron Overcame Late-Season Drama To Reach The NCAA Tournament

• MAC Champion (26-6, 16-2)
• RPI/Pomeroy/Sagarin = #49/#54/#62
• Adjusted Scoring Margin = +10.7
• Likely NCAA Seed: #12-#13

Three Bruce Pearls of Wisdom.

1. Last year’s Tournament darlings, the Ohio Bobcats, saw their shot at a return bid die on Saturday night, but don’t be surprised if their conquerors put some of that MAC mojo to use again this year. The Akron Zips turned in one of the most impressive performances of the day, comprehensively picking apart a good Ohio team en route to the MAC Tournament title. A pair of late regular season losses had recently killed the bubble talk surrounding the Zips, but let’s not forget how they entered the conversation in the first place. Keith Dambrot’s club ripped off 19 straight wins between December 15^th and March 2^nd in what still measures up as the longest winning streak in all of college basketball this season.
2. Akron is as well-rounded a mid-major as you will find, but the Zips truest strength lies in a tougher-than-nails frontcourt. Demetrius Treadwell is the team’s second leading scorer at 11.4 PPG and leading rebounder at 7.9 RPG. His crafty, below-the-rim game may not be the sexiest, but it’s a great complement to the other important Zip on the interior, 7’0” Zeke Marshall. Marshall is the team’s leading scorer (13 PPG) and one of the nation’s leaders in FG percentage at 66%, but the big senior truly excels on the defensive side of the ball. He boasts the 4^th best block percentage in the country (14.1%), and is, quite literally, a huge reason why Akron is one of the 20 best teams in the country in effective field goal percentage defense.
3. The March suspension of point guard Alex Abreu (for drug charges) momentarily shook the team, but back-to-back good wins provide Keith Dambrot with some hope that his team has moved on, however much the loss of Abreu (10.3 PPG, 6.0 APG) hurts on the floor. Freshman Carmelo Betancourt has seen his minutes rise from 10 to 26 a game since the Abreu suspension, but the youngster will certainly not be asked to replicate Abreu’s production. The Zips have won with a balanced, team approach all season long, and the “next man up” attitude should come naturally for Betancourt and others. Dont overlook that even before that 19-game surge, the Zips beat Middle Tennessee State, pounded Penn State (by 25) and took OK State to overtime. Could a MAC team crash the Big Dance for the second straight season?

Louisville

A Decisive Second Half Surge Made The Cardinals Big East Tournament Champions For The Second Straight Season

• Big East Champion (29-5, 17-4)
• RPI/Pomeroy/Sagarin = #3/#2/#1
• Adjusted Scoring Margin = +19.2
• Likely NCAA Seed: #1

 Three Bruce Pearls of Wisdom.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Twelve points doesn’t seem like a particularly crazy total, but in a 58-53 defensive deadlock in a bustling Carrier Dome against a Syracuse team desperate to get back in the win column, Luke Hancock‘s four three-pointers were key to Louisville‘s big Saturday win. As Adam Himmelsbach writes, three of Hancock’s treys came in the final nine minutes of the game, the final one breaking a 48-all tie and giving the Cardinals the momentum to ride to the victory. While Louisville struggled against Syracuse’s zone for much of the game, Hancock brought a three-point threat to the floor which the Cardinals had lacked for much of the game, and he hit big shot after big shot down the stretch.
2. While there aren’t too many optimists in Central New York right now, one important person is keeping faith that the Orange can right the ship come tournament time: Jim Boeheim. After the loss to Louisville, Boeheim discussed the recent three game slide, and his team’s prospects going forward: “I like what we can be… We’ve lost to three ranked teams. We haven’t played very good. We haven’t shot very good and we could’ve won two of the three. If we were getting beat by 15 or 20 points, I’d be worried. I’d be very worried. But we’re right there.’’ Syracuse has a brief reprieve from their brutal season-ending stretch with a game against DePaul before heading down to Washington for their last Big East regular season game, a fitting match-up with Georgetown.
3. The Marquette–Notre Dame rivalry is another that may be lost after conference realignment rears its head. The Golden Eagles can count another victory over the Irish after a comfortable eight point win this weekend. Without Jack Cooley, Notre Dame had no answer for Marquette bigs Chris Otule and Davante Gardner. Chicago Sun-Times writer Dan McGrath suggests that the nature of this rivalry added a lot of weight to this game, especially for Marquette: “Notre Dame’s perceived haughtiness over a higher national profile and stronger academic reputation can stir resentment in the most level-headed Marquette types. So a victory over the Irish in anything is cause for celebration on a campus that embraces celebrating as part of the culture.”
4. The winner of the Big East’s regular season is usually a good bet for a number one seed in the NCAA tournament, and this year it is looking more and more like Georgetown will hold on to win that crown. However, many projections haven’t included Georgetown on the top line of their brackets. The Hoyas have moved into the top five in the polls and they’re winners of 11 straight games going back to a now-inexplicable loss to USF, not to mention that they have one of the nation’s best players in Otto Porter. With the top few teams losing seemingly every week, it shouldn’t shock anyone that a consistent winner like Georgetown could be staring at a top seed at this point, as crazy at that may have sounded just a few weeks ago.
5. After a gutty 20-point, five-rebound, three-assist game that helped propel Cincinnati over UConn, Mick Cronin heaped plenty of praise on guard Sean Kilpatrick: “Mental toughness and work ethic is the hardest thing to find in recruiting, and you really don’t know until you get a guy in practice. I knew during his redshirt year the way that guy attacked practice every day with the life and the energy he had.” Cronin also went out of his way to mention Kilpatrick among Bearcat greats like Kenyon Martin and Steve Logan. Kilpatrick has carried Cincinnati with 17.7 points per game, and was especially key during stretches mid-season when Cashmere Wright and JaQuon Parker struggled to give the Bearcats strong secondary scoring options.

Will Tucker is an RTC correspondent and Big East microsite writer. He filed this report after Monday night’s Louisville-Pittsburgh game.

Louisville endured a three-point shooting onslaught from Pitt down the stretch to hold on to a 64-61 victory on Monday night in the Yum! Center. The Panthers hit five of their eight threes in the final seven minutes, but the Cardinals made the necessary plays in the final possessions — demonstrating a resilience conspicuously absent in close losses to Syracuse and Georgetown. Most impressive was the fact that the Cardinals pulled out the win in spite of sudden attrition on its wings. Wayne Blackshear (sprained shoulder) and Kevin Ware (unspecified suspension) weren’t in the lineup, subtracting 38 reliable minutes per game from Rick Pitino’s rotation.

Louisville’s Tim Henderson played 14 sound minutes off the bench (Credit: Andy Lyons)

Leading up to the game, the two teams appeared headed in vastly different directions. Louisville had lost three consecutive Big East gut-punches and was facing the possibility of a 4-4 record in conference play less than two weeks removed from a #1 ranking in the polls; Pittsburgh had won four straight, capped off by an emphatic 38-point win over DePaul. Rick Pitino’s team needed no extra motivation (nor anxiety) to get up for Pitt, but that’s exactly what they got when they learned in the past couple days that Blackshear and Ware would sit out.

The outlook was bleak on paper, with the eighth-most efficient offense in the country entering the Yum! Center. Who would defend Pitt’s Lamar Patterson and Tray Woodall, who were shooting 39% and 37% from beyond the arc, respectively? Louisville’s lineup was about to get smaller, and it had already allowed Big East foes to shoot more than 34% from outside (fourth worst in the league). Could UofL’s increasingly anemic offense survive the void left by Blackshear’s scoring, which accounts for 12% of their points in league play?

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Will Tucker is an RTC correspondent and a Big East microsite writer. He filed this report after Thursday night’s Louisville-Samford game.

Louisville overwhelmed Samford in all facets of the game tonight, 80-54, to advance to 2-0 and defend their #2 ranking. The box score and postgame highlights will depict a dominant display befitting of an elite team, replete with a 53-28 rebounding margin, a punishing 38 points in the paint, and numerically terrifying double-doubles from Chane Behanan and Gorgui Dieng. But any Louisville fan that watched the game and knows a lick about basketball (read: almost all of them) will temper the glowing conclusions you’d reach from a brief recap. Their team shot 1-8 from three in the first half, but elected to judiciously move the ball into the paint more often than jack up threes. When Samford finally packed the paint with a zone defense and served up wide open looks from beyond the arc in the second half, the Cards took the bait and went 6-23, finishing at a 23% that elicited increasingly frustrated collective groans from the 20,016 on hand at the KFC Yum! Center with each successive brick.

Louisville needs to utilize Chane Behanan to score more efficiently

Despite all the things this Louisville team does well (and several things they already do great), their first two games of the 2012-13 season have exposed just how badly they lack a reliable three-point threat. Tonight’s contest refuted any notion that this Louisville team may achieve even average outside shooting. Rick Pitino had displayed uncharacteristic concern over his wings’ jump shots in his postgame press conference last Sunday, after former McDonald’s All-American Wayne Blackshear and transfer Luke Hancock combined to shoot 3-14 from beyond the arc against Manhattan. Tonight, they delivered a dismal 2-18 (11%) performance from outside, while streaky shooter Russ Smith (4-7 3FG) was the only one who salvaged Louisville’s team stat of 7-31 from long range. Blackshear and Hancock, both billed as capable jump shooters, have looked noticeably frustrated in the first two games of the year. Pitino tonight related Hancock to a hitter in a slump, forcing his shot in a fruitless effort “to make contact.” Blackshear, for his part, seems headed in the right direction, appearing much more assertive and confident as he built a somewhat inefficient stat line of 13 points and five rebounds tonight.

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College basketball tipped off Friday and as the weekend drew to a close, all but two Big East teams have played and only two of them lost. From Connecticut’s shocking win over Michigan State to South Florida’s disastrous debut against Central Florida, Big East fans who weren’t able to get to their televisions this weekend missed a lot of good action. Rather than recap each game individually or only focus on some of the games, we figured the best way to get the uninformed up to speed was with a broad look at some of the best and worst from conference programs this weekend.

The Good

UConn’s Surprising Victory in Germany Represented a Big East Highlight of the Weekend

• Connecticut coach Kevin Ollie’s debut. The first year coach couldn’t have scripted a better start to his career than his team’s gritty 66-62 win over No. 14 Michigan State in Germany. Not only did the rookie head coach beat a legend in Tom Izzo, but his team played with passion and determination, especially considering they don’t have a postseason to look forward to. The good Shabazz Napier (25 points and zero turnovers) showed up for the Huskies and the defense held the Spartans to just 37.5 percent from the field for the game. Ollie isn’t going to earn a long-term contract after one game, but if he can get his team to play that hard all season, he may win over the decision-makers in Storrs.
• Jack Cooley’s first game as Notre Dame’s offensive focal point. The team effort wasn’t great and if it wasn’t for the all-around performance of Cooley (19 points, 11 rebounds, six blocks) the Fighting Irish may have lost their season opener to Evansville. The obvious elephant in the room is that the Aces didn’t have anyone in their frontcourt remotely capable of dealing with Cooley’s size and strength, and that will definitely not be the case every week. But Cooley was ruthlessly efficient, active defensively and on the glass, and smart with the ball in the post. The Fighting Irish will need to be better on the perimeter if they want to meet expectations this season, but it is always nice to have an anchor in the post if they need it. Read the rest of this entry »

Will Tucker is an RTC correspondent and a Big East microsite writer. He can be found on Twitter @blrdswag. 

The Louisville Cardinals officially kicked off their season this afternoon with a decisive victory over Steve Masiello’s shorthanded Manhattan team. There were several intriguing narratives heading into today’s game, in which Rick Pitino’s squad sought to validate their lofty preseason ranking and answer some lingering questions about their player rotation and offense. Here are a handful of the most compelling storylines and some conclusions we can draw from the Manhattan game:

The Cards Scrapped Their Way to a Big Victory on Sunday

• Manhattan’s odds of pulling off an upset in Louisville took a major blow hours before tip off, when it was revealed that star senior George Beamon (19 PPG) would sit out today with an ankle injury. This made it even more difficult to gauge the Cardinals. The overwhelmed Jaspers turned it over 27 times under the duress of Louisville’s athletic full-court press –– the most Louisville has forced since 2004. Masiello admitted after the game that even had Beamon played and everything had gone right for them, his team would have still lost by a comfortable margin.
• The most anticipated competition heading into the season was at the power forward position, where embattled sophomore Chane Behanan returned today after serving a suspension for both of Louisville’s exhibition games. Pitino opted to start promising freshman Montrezl Harrell, who played extremely well in both preseason contests, but both players split minutes and spent much of the first half on the court at the same time after Gorgui Dieng picked up two fouls in the first two minutes. Harrell certainly didn’t appear eager to forfeit his place in the starting lineup, recording six points, four rebounds, a block and a steal, all the while exhibiting the unrelenting motor that recruiting analysts had raved about during his high school career. For his part, Behanan seemed to respond well to the challenge, grabbing a team-high nine rebounds, eight points, and a career-high three steals in 24 minutes. The game didn’t definitely determine the picture at the four spot going forward, but it seems unlikely Behanan, the MVP of last season’s NCAA Tournament West Regional, will tolerate the indignity of being displaced by a freshman for long. That kind of motivation can only be a good thing for Louisville fans. Read the rest of this entry »

It is truly a testament to the coaching ability of Rick Pitino that last season’s offensively challenged Louisville team made the Final Four after finishing the regular season seventh in the conference. The Cardinals had trouble scoring and dealt with a rash of injuries all season, and yet when most of the dust had cleared, there was Pitino and his team, scrapping with an overpowering Kentucky team in the Final Four. In the end, Kentucky was too much, but now the roles have reversed. The team in Lexington has a lot of questions to answer, while the team in Louisville returns four of its top six scorers, including the reigning conference defensive player of the year and one of the favorites for this season’s conference player of the year. Assuming some of the team’s underclassmen progress as expected and most of the team can stay healthy, there are very few squads in the country who can match the Cardinals’ combination of talent and depth. Now it will be up to Pitino and his staff to put all the pieces together. There are still plenty of questions about where the offense will come from and the roster’s one weakness may be its lack of an accomplished outside shooter. But the Cardinals’ defense was the most efficient in the country last season and it should be almost as good if not better this season. Anything less than a return trip to the Final Four will probably be viewed as a disappointment, especially if that team in Lexington makes it back instead.

2011-12 Record: 30-10, 10-8

2011-12 Postseason: NCAA Tournament Final Four, lost to Kentucky 69-61.

Rick Pitino Has Louisville Poised To Make A Repeat Run To The Final Four

Schedule: Just a quick glance at the Cardinals’ non-conference slate should make it plainly obvious that Louisville will have little trouble with the opposition in the early part of the season. A December trip to Memphis and the home bout with Kentucky right before the New Year represent what should be the only two challenging non-conference opponents Louisville will face. As for the conference schedule, aside from a four-game stretch in the middle of January where a home date with Syracuse is sandwiched between road games at Connecticut and Villanova and then Georgetown, the rest of the conference slate should be manageable for a team as experienced, deep, and physical as the Cardinals.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

There were few topics more thoroughly dissected and debated this offseason than transfers. The discourse began not one month after the coronation of last season’s National Champion Kentucky Wildcats with Jared Uthoff’s highly-publicized transfer tug-of-war with Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan. It continued when the NCAA released word (via ESPN’s Outside the Lines program) of its intentions to review transfer guidelines as part of a larger concern over a the growing frequency of player movement, much of which – as quantified  by SI.com’s Luke Winn – is characterized by a nontraditional upward flow, whereby players seek to improve their competitive situations by jumping to better teams in high-major conferences. There is a growing fear, one that bears out in Winn’s numerical analysis, that coaches are using the pool of dissatisfied players in lesser conferences as a secondary recruiting market, that mid-major teams will increasingly suffer the possibility of having their players lost to a “poaching culture” of high-major powers plucking the lower ranks’ top talents.

After being overtaken by Kendall Marshall, Drew left UNC to reignite his career in Los Angeles (photo credit: US Presswire)

This is a legitimate concern. The NCAA will likely implement policies to cut down on the various loopholes and pathways in which players are allowed to relinquish their initial commitments in favor of joining a new program, or at least skew the cost-benefit analysis of making such a move towards staying put, but those changes may not come to bear for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, we’re left with a college hoops landscape where established players with proven track records can pack their bags for greener pastures. This year’s batch includes several players who could alter their new teams’ seasons in important ways. The list of newly-eligible transfers is long and varied, so I highlighted 10 newcomers whose first seasons in new locales should find immediate success. As is the case with all of these preseason lists, the qualifications for inclusion are at best fuzzy, and at worst, flawed. There are a lot of transfers, so narrowing the list wasn’t easy. So before you rage against your favorite team’s new hot shooting guard being left out of the group, remember to take into account the sheer numerical backdrop from which any selective transfer-based analysis is grounded.

Herewith, in random order, the list:

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1. Today is the rare double holiday and no offense to Columbus Day, which is great and all, but let’s face it, the first day of the 2012-13 Big East Microsite is a far bigger deal across the country. If you read Will’s opening post, you know that we have a solid group of folks this year and we are aiming to be bigger and better this season. So let’s dive right in, shall we? It seems only fitting that we should lead off with a note involving new commissioner Mike Aresco, who spoke to reporters about the state of the conference this weekend and had some interesting things to say about basketball in particular. The jist of his chat was that he isn’t worried about weak football teams dragging down the brand because Big East basketball is “legendary.” I guess we shouldn’t tell him that some of the conference’s most “legendary” programs are leaving soon enough for greener pastures and one has already left. We will cut him some slack since its his job to make the conference sound good and because the basketball will remain pretty darn good. Frankly, we have always thought of the Big East as a basketball conference, I am sorry, but Syracuse v. Connecticut just doesn’t hold the same allure on the gridiron as it does on the hardwood.
2. Well, that was quick. Facing a rather grim season outlook, UConn fans got a surge of hope in September when the nation’s No. 1 prospect, Jabari Parker, took an in-home visit from the Huskies after new head coach Kevin Ollie was promoted last month. But just as quickly as it began, it has ended, as Parker has announced his five finalists and UConn is not among them. UConn was hardly a favorite at any point in the race so it shouldn’t be too disappointing. And in some sense, just the fact that Ollie has enough influence to get through Parker’s doorway after the Huskies had already been cut from the list means that the program’s recruiting is in capable hands.
3. I don’t have any idea how far away the “very near future” is but it sure sounds like Georgetown and coach John Thompson, III, are very close to getting a new, on-campus, athletic facility that would help Georgetown’s athletic teams stay competitive in the conference’s ongoing facilities race. The new building will cost $60 million dollars and basically only needs a final round of fundraising before the school can get started on its construction. The facility is going to house multiple sports teams, but make no mistake about it, Georgetown knows where its bread is buttered, and this move is designed to help the basketball teams stay competitive. The conference is full of programs with glimmering, shiny, multi-million dollar facilities, and it is high time that Georgetown got its own.  It is far too early to see what type of impact the facility will have on recruiting, but needless to say, it won’t hurt.
4. The good folks over at CBS Sports examined the question of whether Madison Square Garden is better-suited to host the ACC Tournament than the Big East Tournament, especially in the wake of all the defections. There are a lot of angles to analyze here but it does seem surprising Madison Square Garden didn’t at least take a shot at landing the ACC, which figures to feature better altogether basketball programs and programs like Syracuse and Pittsburgh that always draw well in New York City. It is also pretty clear that while the Big East has done an admirable job of patching up its basketball holes, the tournament isn’t going to have the same aura about it. I would explain more but frankly they do a better job, so just go read the article.
5. We end with something fluffy and really there is nothing fluffier than a nice “top list.” Taking a break from its excellent coverage of the local Orange, Syracuse.com ranked the top five transfers coming into the Big East this season and the list is pretty excellent. Personally I would have said Luke Hancock will make more of an impact for Louisville than Tony Chennault will for Villanova but that is the beauty of these lists. They are pointless and fun-to-read at the same time. We will try to stay away from these for the most part and deliver some actual news. But it’s the first day, and this post is already late. So enjoy and welcome back for what should be another excellent season of college basketball.