March 2, 2011

VOLUME XV • NUMBER 28MARCH 2, 2011

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PAGE 2 LOUISVILLE SPORTSREPORT FEBRUARY 3, 2011

MARCH 2, 2011 LOUISVILLE SPORTSREPORT PAGE 3

E D I T O R I A L S T A F F

GENERAL MANAGER - Jack Coffee

SENIOR WRITER AND EDITOR - Russ Brown

OPERATIONS MANAGER - Howie Lindsey

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES - Mickey Clark, Betty Olsen and Blanche Kitchen

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS - Dave Klotz, Shelley Feller, Gail Kamenish,

Howie Lindsey and Chuck Feist

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNISTS - Matt Willinger, Jeff Wafford,

Jason Puckett and Rick Cushing

GRAPHIC DESIGNER - Scott Stortz

COPY EDITOR - Rick Cushing

The Louisville SportsReport is printed in Kentucky and based in Louisville. It is published weekly in January, February and March, monthly in April, May, June and July and weekly mid-August through late December by Louisville Sports News, L.L.C., in Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville Sports News, L.L.C.: Owner and General Manager - Jack Coffee. The SportsReport was founded in 1996. United States Postal Number: 015255

POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Louisville SportsReport, P.O. Box 17464, Louisville, KY 40217. Four weeks advance notice is required on old addresses as well as new. Periodicals Postage paid at Louisville, Ky. Subscriptions are priced at $56.95 each (plus 6% Ky. tax) for 38 issues. Members of the University of Louisville’s Cardinal Athletic Fund receive a special group rate of $39.75 for their initial subscriptions and that amount is applied from each annual donation. Year-round first-class mailing is available for an additional $53 per year. Please call for Canadian and overseas rates. Not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs unless accompanied by return postage. Publisher reserves right to accept or reject advertisements. Copyright 2008 by Louisville Sports News, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. For subscriber information or circulation questions call 1-502-636-4330. Office hours at 2805 S. Floyd St. in Louisville: Mon-Wed. from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

VOLUME XV, NUMBER 28 • MARCH 2, 2011

CSPACOLLEGESPORTS

PUBLISHERSASSOCIATIONCOVER PHOTO COMPOSITE

BY SCOTT STORTZ

AMERICA’S FOREMOST AUTHORITY ONUNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE ATHLETICS®

Office Phone: (502) 636-4330Fax: (502) 636-9265

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W H A T ’ S I N S I D E

4 THE MARSHON BROOKS SHOW IS COMING TO TOWN By Rick Cushing6 BIG EAST DOUBLE BYE A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD FOR CARDS By Russ Brown10 THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY By Howie Lindsey11,13 LOUISVILLE VS. PITT PHOTO GALLERY16 PITINO’S SUCCESS HAS ALWAYS INCLUDED THREES By Russ Brown

17 MOUNTAINEERS WILL BE SEEKING TO EVEN THE SCORE By Rick Cushing18,19 PROVIDENCE’S BROOKS TALLIES BIG EAST-RECORD 52 By Rick Cushing20 CARDINAL STARS OF THE WEEK By Howie Lindsey22 MAKE YOUR PICKS24 CARDS TO BE ON NATIONAL TV AT LEAST FOUR TIMES

14 THE PUNCH-CLOCKERLouisville’s preseason All-America 2B Ryan Wright has the talent of a superstar and the blue-collar work ethic of a walk-on. That combination could make him rich.

5 PITT KILLERSLouisville’s defense held Pitt to its lowest fi rst-half point total (22) since 2009. The Cards also held Pitt without a fi eld goal for 11-plus minutes of the fi rst half.

15 BIG RECRUITING WEEKENDLouisville coach Rick Pitino and his staff hosted three elite recruits in the 2012 class Sunday for the Pitt game, including top point guard commit Rodney Purvis.

8-9 DROMO: AN UNSUNG HEROFormer UofL coach John Dromo was more than just the coach in between Peck Hickman and Denny Crum. LSR owner Jack Coffee takes a look back.

21 SENIOR DAY WINSenior Keshia Hines got a double-double in her fi nal home game, and the Cardinals have a great shot at a top-four seed in the Big East Tournament.

WHITEOUT WORKS AS CARDS KNOCK OFF NO. 4 PITTJunior Kyle Kuric and Louisville lost a nine-point halftime lead and had to go to overtime but outlasted Pittsburgh Sunday at the KFC Yum! Center in front of 22,758 white-clad fans.

THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE LOUISVILLE SPORTSREPORT

WILL BE MAILED MARCH 7

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7 HURTT IS STAYINGLouisville defensive line coach Clint Hurtt’s bright future career path will continue in Louisville for at least another season after he turned down an offer from Auburn last week.

PAGE 4 LOUISVILLE SPORTSREPORT MARCH 2, 2011

LOUISVILLE BASKETBALL

THE MARSHON BROOKS SHOW IS COMING TO TOWNPR

OVID

ENCE

FRI

ARS

Wednesday, March 2Providence at Louisville

7 p.m. WHAS -11 TV

Coach: Keno Davis

Last season: 12-19, 4-14 Big East

Overall record: 73-53 (fourth season)

At Providence: 45-48 (third season)

Last NCAA Tournament appearance: 2004

MARSHON BROOKSMARSHON BROOKS

2010-11 SCHEDULEDATE OPPONENT TIME NOVEMBER Nov. 13, 2010 Dartmouth W, 87-52 Nov. 15, 2010 Yale W. 58-55 Nov. 18, 2010 Morgan St. W. 77-55 Nov. 20, 2010 Prairie View W, 78-62 Nov. 23, 2010 LaSalle1 W, 84-77 Nov. 29, 2010 Central Conn St. W, 92-57

DECEMBERDec. 1, 2010 Northeastern W, 77-72 Dec. 4, 2010 Rhode Island W, 87-74 Dec. 6, 2010 Brown W, 91-64 Dec. 8, 2010 at Boston College L, 88-86 Dec. 11, 2010 Alabama W, 82-70 Dec. 21, 2010 Sacred Heart W, 84-76 Dec. 28, 2010 at Syracuse L, 81-74

JANUARY Jan. 1, 2011 St. John’s L, 67-65 Jan. 4, 2011 Pittsburgh L, 83-79 Jan. 8, 2011 at Rutgers L, 85-72 Jan. 13, 2011 at West Virginia L, 93-63 Jan. 16, 2011 at South Florida L, 79-72 Jan. 22, 2011 Louisville W, 72-67 Jan. 26, 2011 Villanova W, 83-68 Jan. 30, 2011 at Seton Hall L, 81-71

FEBRUARYFeb. 2, 2011 South Florida W, 68-63 Feb. 5, 2011 at Georgetown L, 83-81 Feb. 13, 2011 at Connecticut L, 75-57 Feb. 17, 2011 DePaul L, 79-76 Feb. 19, 2011 Cincinnati L, 93-81 Feb. 23, 2011 Notre Dame L, 94-93 Feb. 27, 2011 at Marquette L, 84-62

MARCHMar. 2, 2011 at Louisville 7 p.m. ETMar. 5, 2011 Rutgers 7 p.m. ET

By Rick CushingWhen UofL played at Providence on Jan. 22, the Friars were

11-8 overall but 0-6 in the Big East, and they hadn’t won a league game in 17 tries dating to last season.

Then they knocked off the Cards 72-67, rallying from a 43-39 halftime deficit and closing the game with a 16-8 run as UofL shot just 33.3 percent in the second half, including 0 for 12 on three-point shots. The Cards made just 17.4 percent of their three-point shots for the game (4 of 23), with Mike Marra going 0 for 5 on treys and Preston Knowles and Kyle Kuric each going 0 for 4. The Friars, who shot 40 percent on treys (8 of 20), were led by Marshon Brooks with 27 points (20 in the second half, when he hit 4 of 5 treys) and freshman Gerard Coleman with a career-high 19.

Providence starts two freshmen, two sophomores and one senior (Brooks) but looked more poised in the closing minutes than the Cards, who “made a lot of bonehead plays down the stretch,” coach Rick Pitino said.

Providence then upset No. 8 Villanova 83-68 in its very next game, but it has lost 7 of 8 games since, the only victory coming against hapless South Florida. In two of those losses, Brooks lit up the scoreboard. He had 43 points in an 83-81 loss at Georgetown on Feb. 5, and he scored a Big East-record 52 points last Wednesday in a 94-93 loss to No. 8 Notre Dame.

“We tried everything,” Irish coach Mike Brey said. “Every-body had their chance guarding him. We went box-and-one, we trapped out of our zone. We finally got to a point where we just wanted him to only score twos. No threes. I was thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll score enough to get out of here.’”

Brooks made 20 of 28 shots, including 6 of 10 treys.Brooks is second in the country in scoring at 25.4 ppg. It

will be interesting to see how the Cards go about defending him and whether they can hold him down. Or will they take the approach legendary UK coach Adolph Rupp took against LSU’s Pete Maravich – let Brooks score and shut down the rest of the team? It will be interesting.

Providence now is 14-15, 3-13 after losing at Marquette last Sunday.

COACHDavis took over at Providence after one highly successful

season at Drake, which he guided to a 28-5 record and earned a couple of Coach of the Year honors. The Friars were 19-14 in his first season there and barely missed an invite to the NCAA tourney. Then came last season’s disaster, when Providence al-lowed an inexcusable 82.2 points a game, last in the Big East and 333rd in the country out of 334 Division I teams.

Davis’ overall record now is 73-53.GUARDSThe 6-5 Brooks is listed as a forward but more realistically

is a guard in a free-wheeling three-guard offense. He’s averag-ing 25.4 ppg, first in the Big East and second in the country (BYU’s Jimmer Fredette leads at 27.4 ppg), and he’s shooting 49.6 percent overall, 33.5 percent from three-point range. He’s second on the team at 1.3 blocks a game, and he has 60 as-sists but has turned the ball over 85 times. He also leads the team in rebounding at 7.3 rpg. He is the only Big East player in the top 10 in scoring and rebounding this season. He’ll be a

first-round NBA draft pick, probably a lottery pick.Vincent Council, a 6-2 sophomore, is second on the team

at 13.2 ppg but is shooting just 35.0 percent overall, 31.6 percent on treys. He leads the Big East and is seventh in the country at 6.2 assists per game, although he’s averaging 3.3 turnovers a game. His turnover-to-assist ratio is 1.83/1, which is 138th in the country. He had 12 points and three assists against UofL on Jan. 22.

The third guard is 6-4 freshman Coleman, who’s third on the team at 10.0 ppg. He’s shooting 42.8 percent overall but just 20 percent on treys. He’s also committed more turnovers (52) than he has assists (41).

The top backcourt sub is 6-3 sophomore Duke Mondy (7.7 ppg, fourth on the team), who’s shooting just 35.4 percent. He’s second in the Big East and 34th in the country in steals at 2.1 per game. He scored just three points against the Cards.

A couple of freshmen who have played in every game are 6-1 Bryce Cotton (3.6 ppg) and 5-10 Dre Evans (1.5 ppg), who hit a three-pointer against UofL with the only shot he took.

BIG MENKadeem Batts, a 6-8 sophomore forward, is averaging 7.4

ppg, fifth on the team, and 5.8 rpg, third on the team. He’s shooting 45.8 percent overall, 38.9 percent on treys (7 for 18). He had eight points and five rebounds in the first meeting.

The starting center is 6-8 sophomore Bilal Dixon (6.0 ppg, 6.8 rpg). He stays close to the basket and is shooting 53.3 per-cent, with no three-point attempts. He’s 100th in the country in blocked shots at 1.5 per game. He didn’t score and had just two rebounds in the first meeting.

The top interior subs are 6-7 freshman Ron Giplaye (1.8 ppg, 1.8 rpg) and 7-0 senior Ray Hall (1.1 ppg, 2.0 rpg), nei-ther of whom scored in the first meeting.

MISC.Providence continues to rank highly in scoring offense (77.2

ppg, first in the Big East, 28th in the country), but the Friars continue to give it back at the other end, surrendering 73.9 ppg, next-to-last in the conference and 298th in the country.

The Friars are shooting 43.1 percent, 11th in the league, and are allowing their foes to shoot 43.5 percent, 14th in the league. They are shooting just 30.1 percent on treys, 14th in the league and 274th in the country. It seems odd that they are faring well on three-point defense, holding foes to 31.7 percent three-point shooting, 46th in the country (UofL made just 17.4 percent of its three-point tries against PC on Jan. 22), but perhaps that’s because foes have such success scor-ing against PC inside.

The Friars have a rebounding margin of 2.3 a game, but UofL outrebounded them 34-26 on Jan. 22.

They are blocking 4.9 shots per game, fifth in the Big East and 37th in the country, and they are averaging 8.0 steals per game, fifth in the league, 49th in the country.

ALL-TIME SERIESUofL and Providence have met 15 times in a series that

dates to 1971, with the Cards holding a 10-5 advantage. The Cards are 5-0 at home against the Friars but only 4-3 at Provi-dence. The other three meetings came on neutral courts.

NO NAME POS HT WT YEAR HOMETOWN 1 DUKE MONDY G 6-3 196 SOPHOMORE GRAND RAPIDS, MI 2 MARSHON BROOKS G-F 6-5 190 SENIOR STONE MOUNTAIN, GA 4 DRE EVANS G 5-10 160 FRESHMAN DALLAS, TX 10 KADEEM BATTS F 6-8 235 SOPHOMORE POWDER SPRINGS, GA 11 RON GIPLAYE F 6-7 240 FRESHMAN WILMINGTON, DE 12 GERARD COLEMAN G 6-4 170 FRESHMAN WEST ROXBURY, MA 13 BRICE KOFANE F 6-8 195 FRESHMAN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 15 XAVIER DAVIS G 5-11 160 SOPHOMORE SMITHFIELD, RI 21 LEE GOLDSBROUGH F 6-9 220 FRESHMAN NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND 25 BRYCE COTTON G 6-1 165 FRESHMAN TUCSON, AZ 32 VINCENT COUNCIL G 6-2 180 SOPHOMORE BROOKLYN, NY 41 CHRIS CARTER G 6-4 180 SENIOR WORCESTER, MA 42 BILAL DIXON F-C 6-8 228 SOPHOMORE JERSEY CITY, NJ 53 MIKE MURRAY G 6-2 188 FRESHMAN TROY, NY 55 RAY HALL C 7-0 285 SENIOR DENVER, CO

2010-11 PROVIDENCE BASKETBALL ROSTER


RECRUITING NOTEBOOK10 AMAZING AND MEMORABLE MOMENTS OF THE 2009-2010 SEASONLOUISVILLE BASKETBALL

IT’S A WHITEOUT KNOCKOUT AS UOFL EDGES PITT IN OTBy Russ Brown Their top two three-point threats shot as if

they were blindfolded. They were hit with yet another injury. They managed just one fi eld goal in the last 6:51 of regulation. They were playing the Big East’s fi rst-place team, one that is ranked in the top 10 nationally in fi ve major categories.

Yet Louisville’s Cardinals, as they have done all season, found a way to win.

In front of a rockin’ KFC Yum! Center Whiteout crowd of 22,758, No. 16 UofL (22-7, 11-5) looked as if it is ready for postseason success by tripping No. 4 Pittsburgh 62-59 in overtime to remain in contention for one of

the Big East’s four double byes into the quarterfi nals of next week’s league tournament in New York.

The victory sends the Cardinals into their last two regular-season games against Providence (14-15, 3-13) at home Wednesday and at West Virginia (18-10, 9-7) Sat-urday tied for third place

with St. John’s and one game behind Notre Dame (12-4). Behind them is a crowd of sev-en teams with six or seven losses.

“This was a huge win for us,” UofL point guard Peyton Siva said. “If we had lost today, we would have dropped down in that big pile of misery.”

It was also a big boost for Louisville’s po-tential NCAA Tournament seeding, giving the Cards their fourth win over a top-15 team.

And the Cards continued to put up a strong defense of their homecourt, moving to 8-0 in the Yum! Center against conference teams to remain one of only two clubs that are perfect at home in league play, the other being Notre Dame.

Overcoming the combined 3-of-15 three-point shooting by Kyle Kuric and Preston Knowles and the sprained right knee suffered by leading rebounder Rakeem Buckles mid-way through the fi rst half of the rough and ragged affair, UofL used tenacious defense, ferocious rebounding and timely shooting to earn their third win in the last four outings.

And despite their shooting woes, Kuric and Knowles hit big shots late in regulation and in overtime.

UofL coach Rick Pitino says his team pre-fers fi nesse over physical play, so with burly Pittsburgh (25-4, 13-3) ranking second in NCAA Division I in rebounding margin at 11.4, rebounding was a major concern. But the Cards didn’t back down and fought the Panthers to a virtual deadlock on the boards, beaten by only one, 39-38, in the slugfest.

“That’s not our strength at all, but we had to keep them off the boards,” forward Mike Marra said. “It was a mindset coming in that we had to hit everybody, be physical and be the aggressor on the boards.”

The undersized but high-leaping Kuric (6-4) led the way with seven rebounds as UofL took a committee approach to the glass, with four other players getting fi ve or six boards.

“Their big men are so physically strong and so fundamentally sound that they’re almost impossible one-on-one to rebound over,” Marra said. “So we have to gang re-bound as a team and everybody had to get in there. Kyle did a great job.”

“Kyle was awesome on the backboard,” Pitino said. “He was just magnifi cent for a

6-foot-4 basketball player.”Kuric was also a force offensively, despite

uncharacteristically missing fi ve of his seven three-point attempts. He scored 12 points, including the go-ahead trey in overtime after his attempt at a game-winning basket at the end of regulation was blocked.

Siva led UofL with 14 points, and Marra had 11 for his highest output since also scor-ing 11 at South Florida on Jan. 9. Knowles hit just 3 of 12 shots, including 1 of 8 from beyond the arc, but handed out a game-high seven assists and grabbed fi ve rebounds.

“Sometimes you can’t play your style, sometimes you have to play the other team’s style and win,” Kuric said. “It was a big win for us for obvious reasons. We won with de-fense, No. 1, and then rebounding. If you miss a shot, don’t let it affect you.”

It was a gritty victory against one of the nation’s most physical teams.

“We showed great toughness down the stretch,” Siva said.

Tough defense won this one. The Cards held Pitt to 18 percent shooting (3 of 17) for the fi rst 16 1/2 minutes, relented somewhat for periods in the second half, then regained their defensive intensity in the overtime.

After taking an early 8-7 lead, the Pan-thers got just one fi eld goal over the next 11 1/2 minutes as UofL took a 31-22 halftime lead. Then they failed to get a single basket in the extra session, scoring all three of their points on free throws.

Even at that, Pitt -- which shot 56 percent (14 of 25) in the second half to Louisville’s 31 percent (9 of 31) -- outshot the winners 41.5 percent to 34.4. But the Cards hit eight three-pointers to four for Pitt for a 24-12 ad-vantage in that department. They also had just nine turnovers to the Panthers’ 16.

“We attacked the zone, and we were getting good shots,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “We did good things and defended well enough. Turnovers hurt us. We had four travel calls, and that’s something you just can’t have. But it was a good game and I give them a lot of credit.”

Knowles snapped a 54-54 tie with a 15-footer at the free-throw line for only his second basket of the second half with 33 seconds left. But Brad Wanamaker hit an 18-footer at 17.1 seconds to tie it again and set up a fi nal chance for UofL.

Siva’s driving layup attempt was blocked out of bounds with 2.3 seconds left, and

Kuric’s layup try at the fi nal buzzer was alsoswatted away.

The Cards then turned up the defensive heat in the OT, with the Panthers committingturnovers on three of their fi rst four posses-sions and missing all three of their shots dur-ing the fi ve-minute period.

Kuric’s three-pointer from the right wing at the 3:47 mark put UofL ahead to stay at59-56, and he appeared to seal UofL’s secondwin over a top-fi ve team this season whenhe scored on a dunk with less than a secondremaining.

That’s when things got a little bizzare. The clock didn’t stop after Kuric’s dunk,

which put the Cardinals up 62-57, and thehorn sounded. Some Louisville cheerleaderson the baseline raced onto the fl oor, withone male cheerleader grabbing the ball andtossing it in the air.

Offi cials called Louisville for a delay-of-game technical foul and put 0.5 seconds backon the clock. Pitt’s Ashton Gibbs knockeddown two free throws and the Panthers hadone last chance to tie, but Gibbs couldn’t getoff a desperation heave in time.

“All good things have to come to an end, and the male cheerleader (at Louisville)comes to an end,” Pitino joked. “Hopefully,he’ll learn the rules.”

Gilbert Brown scored 20 points and Wa-namaker had 13 points, 12 rebounds and sixassists for the Panthers, whose most painfulmiss in the overtime came with about fi veseconds to go when Wanamaker passedup an open three-point shot with the Pan-thers trailing 60-57 and passed to Brownunder the basket instead. But Brown misseda layup, and UofL’s Terrence Jennings cameaway with it.

Jennings hit Siva with an outlet pass, and Siva fed Kuric for the dunk.

“We can’t get a better look than that,” Dixon said. “We did exactly what we want-ed. We couldn’t have had a better situation... we just need to fi nish the play.”

Pitt’s second loss in its last three games means the Panthers have just a one-gamelead over Notre Dame heading into the fi nalweek of the season.

The Panthers travel to South Florida on Wednesday and close the season at homeagainst Villanova on Saturday. Pitt will needto fi nish ahead of the Irish in the standingsto win the title because Notre Dame beat thePanthers 56-51 on Jan. 24.

“This is a tough loss for us,” said Wana-maker. “Now we have to win out to win theBig East. We caught them out of sync a littlebit in the second half, but we just couldn’tmake some shots and didn’t fi nish strong inovertime.”

The win gave the Cards a 2-1 record in overtime games this season. They won atthen-No. 5 Connecticut in double overtime,79-78, and lost in OT at then-No. 8 NotreDame, 89-79, and Pitino said they learned avaluable lesson from those games.

“We were very aggressive (in OT) at Con-necticut,” Pitino said. “At Notre Dame, welet them fi re it on us. I told our guys we’vegot to come out aggressive this time.

“We got a great win, and it was a ter-rifi c basketball game. I thought our guysplayed great defense throughout the gameand made some really good plays offensively.They gave a terrifi c team effort against a verygood basketball team.”

Freshman Gorgui Dieng tipped Pitt’s Nassir Robinson’s shot away as Louisville senior Preston Knowles tried to block Robinson’s path to the basket. - photo by Gail Kamenish

C A R D S S H O W T H E I R T O U G H N E S S , C L A I M T H I R D P L A C E I N B I G E A S T

RUSS BROWNRUSS BROWN

By Russ BrownThree months ago, maybe less, and certain-

ly after the homecourt drubbing by Kentucky on New Year’s Eve, few would have predicted that going into the fi nal week of the regular season Louisville’s basketball team would be among the leaders in the Big East and posi-tioned for one of the four double byes into the league tournament’s quarterfi nals.

The list of skeptics -- or at least those whose expectations weren’t very high -- includes the head man, Rick Pitino, who warned anybody who would listen that this would be a “bridge season,” adding that the star of the show was likely to be the new KFC Yum! Center.

“I thought we would be a .500 team, and that’s not real good,” Pitino said after No. 16 UofL edged No. 4 Pittsburgh 62-59 in overtime Sunday after-noon for another Yummy victory. “We didn’t have high expectations. I specif-ically didn’t want to call it a rebuilding year because

that means you’re building for the future.“A bridge year means if you get better

during the year, you build your bridge and at the end of the year you cross it and you’re a good basketball team. With (Jared) Swo-pshire and all the injuries, our players have done an amazing job of overcoming it. We had a lot of makeshift lineups. We really said we’re just going to take care of the present, we’re not going to think ahead.

“We had no visions of anything going into the season, we really didn’t. Everybody kept saying it’s going to be diffi cult to stay posi-tive, get better down the road. So we’re tick-led pink with where we are right now, and we’re going to continue to do what we’ve always done, and that is to prepare for every game like it’s the last one we’ll play.”

Asked how he felt about the Cards’ pros-pects sitting in the locker room last November as the season got under way, sophomore for-ward Mike Marra indicated he had his doubts about the team’s chances for success.

“I don’t want to say I didn’t think it,” Mar-ra said. “I knew it was possible, but I’m not sure I was too hopeful about it.”

Picked to fi nish eighth in the Big East, UofL (22-7 overall) is tied for third in the Big East with St. John’s at 11-5 going into Wednes-day’s home fi nale with Providence (14-15, 3-13), which handed the Cards perhaps their most disappointing loss of the season, 72-67, on Jan. 22 at Providence. As an indication of the conference’s balance, though, only two games in the loss column separate UofL from 11th place.

The Cards will end the regular season Sat-urday at West Virginia (18-10, 9-7), then get ready for the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden next week. The Cards have as-sured themselves of at least a fi rst-round bye and could possibly still get a double bye even if they split their last two games, depending on what several other teams do.

UofL holds the tie-breaker over both St. John’s and Syracuse (11-6). The Red Storm, the hottest team in the league with a six-game winning streak and victories in eight of their last nine, are likely to fi nish 13-5 be-

cause their last two games are against sag-ging Seton Hall (11-17, 5-11) on the road and at home against South Florida (9-20, 3-13).

UofL would lose a tie-breaker to the next three teams in the standings -- Georgetown (10-7), Cincinnati (9-7) and Villanova (9-7) -- but the Cards would have to drop both of their remaining games for that to happen. Not likely.

So a double bye appears to be a near-cer-tainty, meaning UofL wouldn’t make its tour-nament debut until next Thursday afternoon or evening.

Pitino insists he would rather play the extra game, but he obviously wouldn’t want to do that at the expense of not fi nishing among the top four teams in the conference.

“To tell you the truth, I think we’d rather play because of all the time we’ve missed, playing helps us,” he said. “Certainly, get-ting a double bye with what we thought be-fore the season is a tremendous accomplish-ment for the guys. It would be a heck of an achievement. But we would rather play. Our practices are pretty tough, so I know the guys would rather play.”

Uh, not quite. The players are hoping for a double bye, although they can see the wis-dom of Pitino’s opinion.

“We want the double bye because it would give us more rest and more time to prepare for the next team, see where our competition is coming from,” sophomore point guard Peyton Siva said. “We’ve just got to stay near the top. We’re 5 for 5 in our (three-game) segments, and we’re trying to fi nish this one out good.

“Although it’s nice to have a double bye, once you get to the NCAA you’re not going to have that. Coach P likes to prepare like that because you have a certain amount of time. You win one game, you’ve got less than 24 hours to get ready for the next game, so I think that’s where he’s coming from.”

Said Marra: “I think the double bye is re-ally important. I don’t know what Coach’s aspect is, he hasn’t told us yet. But for me, I would think the double bye is great because every team in the Big East is so good. I don’t want to play one of the lower level teams that might knock us off. I want to get as far into it as possible without having to play.”

Said junior center Terrence Jennings: “Of course we want that double bye. It would be good for us. But right now we’re just focused on the last two games of the Big East and fi n-ishing out strong. If we do that we’ll be fi ne heading into the Big East Tournament and from there to the NCAA Tournament.”

But Jennings added that he doesn’t want to spend any time thinking about the future.

“I feel like we can make a run in the tour-nament, but you don’t want to get ahead of yourself,” he said. “We’re going good right now. When you start looking ahead, things can go wrong. If we stay with our aggressive-ness and play how we played (against Pitt), then we can make a run.”

Whatever unfolds in the next few days, the Cards like their position going into their fi nal two games.

“I think it is setting up beautifully for us,” said Preston Knowles, a senior guard who will be playing his fi nal home game against Provi-dence. “We control our own destiny and our own fate. We want to win out and then pre-pare for a gruesome Big East Tournament.”

“I feel really confi dent,” Marra said. “These last three games we’ve been playing a lot of great defense. Our offense carried us for a while, and now our defense is starting to pick up. We’ve come full circle, and we’re really becoming a solid team overall, so I’m very excited.”

Junior forward Kyle Kuric said a number of factors have contributed to UofL’s unex-pected success.

“The one thing we do well is play as a

team,” he said. “Great leadership. We passthe ball. We rebound, and we’re playing a lotbetter defense now.”

PANTHERS WELL-SCOUTEDJennings said UofL was well-prepared for

everything Pittsburgh did offensively.“I had this feeling that I knew we were go-

ing to win this game because we knew themso well, and it was accurate,” he said. “Ev-erything was accurate. We were calling outtheir plays. We knew where they were going,and at the end of the shot clock everyone hitsomeone and got to the glass.”

Louisville-Pitt is developing into a full-fl edged rivalry, thanks to their battles sinceUofL joined the Big East for the 2006 season.Since then only one game has been decidedby more than seven points -- a 66-53 UofLvictory at Pitt in 2007. Other than that, themargin in the other eight games has aver-aged a mere 4.7 points.

Last season the Panthers stunned the Cards by overcoming a fi ve-point defi cit in the fi nal54 seconds of regulation before winning 82-77 in overtime. The previous year, in FreedomHall, Pitt was No. 1 in the polls and had a10-point lead with nine minutes left beforethe Cards rallied for a 69-63 victory.

Louisville also is one of only two teams to beat Pitt twice at the Petersen Events Cen-ter, winning in 2007 and 2008. Followingeach of those losses, the Panthers exactedrevenge with victories in the Big East Tour-nament.

DIXON A SIVA FANSiva, an up-and-coming guard in the Big

East, has a big fan in Pitt coach Jamie Dix-on. Siva leads the league in steals (2.18 pergame), is sixth in assists (5.0 per game) andis averaging 10.3 points and 2.8 rebounds.

“He’s a guy who gets them going,” Dixon said. “He creates shots for other guys, andhe can score on his own. In the halfcourt, es-pecially, I think he is a key. A lot of their stuffgoes through him. Knowles is their leadingscorer, but Siva is creating more shots forother guys.”

BUCKLES OUT FOR SEASONSophomore forward Rakeem Buckles will

be out for the remainder of the season aftersuffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament inhis right knee in the fi rst half of the UofL-Pittgame.

Buckles had a magnetic resonance imag-ing (MRI) test at Jewish Hospital followingthe game, and the ACL tear was discovered.He will have surgery within the next twoweeks, and his timetable for recovery will bedetermined after surgery.

Buckles had been back for the last fi ve games, returning to action on Feb. 12against Syracuse after missing six weeks and12 games because of a broken left index fi n-ger suffered during practice on Dec. 30. Hemissed the UofL-Kentucky game on Dec. 31and the Cardinals’ fi rst 11 Big East games.

At the time he broke his fi nger in Decem-ber, Buckles was leading the Cardinals andranked ninth in the Big East in rebounding at7.5 rpg. He also was averaging 8.2 ppg. Sincethen he hasn’t been playing as much, but hehad nine points and three rebounds in 13minutes against Connecticut on Feb. 18.

QUOTABLE: “I’m kind of beat up a littlebit, but it’s nothing an ice pack won’t cure.”-- Jennings on Pittsburgh’s physical play.


RECRUITING NOTEBOOK10 AMAZING AND MEMORABLE MOMENTS OF THE 2009-2010 SEASONLOUISVILLE BASKETBALLLOUISVILLE BASKETBALL

Senior Preston Knowles and Louisville pushed past Pitt Sunday for the Cardinals’ 11th league win. Louisville is in third in the Big East standings currently. - photo by Shelley Feller

BIG EAST DOUBLE BYE A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD FOR CARDS



10 AMAZING AND MEMORABLE MOMENTS OF THE 2009-2010 SEASON10 AMAZING AND MEMORABLE MOMENTS OF THE 2009-2010 SEASONCARDINAL FOOTBALL

By Howie LindseyIn past years, if a top assistant coach at

Louisville were to be offered a similar posi-tion by the defending national champion, much less a defending national champion from the SEC, there likely would be noth-ing standing between the coach and the fi rst plane headed South.

How times have changed. UofL defensive line coach Clint Hurtt

was offered the job of Auburn’s defensive line coach last week. Hurtt, an up-and-coming star in the profession who came to Louisville before last season after being Miami’s line coach and recruiting coordina-tor in 2009, visited coach Gene Chizik and the national champion Tigers but turned them down.

“After hearing from Auburn, I felt I needed to at least give them the oppor-tunity for the future of my career and my family,” Hurtt said. “My wife and I went to visit the school, and Coach Chizik and his wife, Jonna, were fantastic and very welcoming. The full staff down there is fantastic, but after coming back here and getting a chance to talk about it with my wife, praying about it with my family and speaking to Coach Strong, we felt it was best for us to stay put and stay home.”

The move - or lack of it - sent more than a few shock waves around the South. A Louisville position coach turning down Au-burn? And apparently Auburn wasn’t the only school coming after Hurtt, who also has received the lion’s share of the credit for UofL’s all-time best recruiting class last month.

“Things have been a little crazy,” he said. “Ever since the season ended, I’ve had people calling, and I listened a little bit, but it would be tough for any school to pull me away from Coach Strong and Louisville.”

So what’s the deal? Why is Hurtt sticking with Louisville? In a heartfelt one-on-one interview with the Louisville SportsReport last week, Hurtt said he feels that staying in Louisville will be better for his eventual career advancement.

“I feel like here my coaching is every bit as appreciated as my recruiting,” he said. “That’s worth a ton for me. I don’t want to be labeled as ‘just a recruiter.’ I don’t want that label.”

Hurtt felt he may have been wanted as a hired gun at some schools (to be clear, he didn’t specify Auburn), but he believes working with this Louisville coaching staff can better prepare him for his next step.

“I have higher aspirations for myself than to be just a recruiter,” Hurtt said. “I want to be a defensive coordinator and eventu-ally a head coach. You just don’t want to get that label. I want to be a great recruit-er, a great teacher and a great coach.”

Hurtt’s aspirations are lofty. A 32-year-old with six years experience as a position

coach and 10 total years of college coach-ing experience, he has his sights set high.

“I originally set my goal to be a head coach by the time I was 40,” Hurtt said. “That is an extremely lofty goal, but I want to keep working to try to achieve that. Even if I don’t get there, I want to get bet-ter each and every year. I can’t learn from anybody better in that respect than Coach Strong. I mean, when you talk about pa-tience and perseverance and waiting for your opportunity, I work for a man that embodies that.”

To become a head coach in the next eight seasons, Hurtt knows he’ll need to continue to push himself.

“I brought a lot of knowledge with me because I played on the defensive line, and I’ve coached around a lot of tremen-dous people, but I’ve been able to develop under Coach Strong,” Hurtt said. “I’m continuing to learn and get better. Being around Coach Strong and going to learn from some professional teams, I’ve spent a lot of time continuing to learn and work-ing to perfect my craft.”

Turning down Auburn isn’t the fi rst time Hurtt has made a career move that left some scratching their heads. His move from Miami, his alma mater, to Louisville also was a shocker. But both decisions have their roots in the same motivation.

“The entire system at the University of Miami from the time I was a player to the time I was a coach hadn’t changed,” Hurtt said. “I learned a lot while I was down there, but I also needed to challenge myself as well. The system was the same year-in and year-out except for one season, and that didn’t really change that much. I feel like I have learned a lot in my fi rst year here, and I want to continue to push myself to learn more. Learning from Coach Strong and Coach (Vance) Bedford and all of our coaching staff has been a tremen-

dous opportunity for me.”Strong has said some glowing things

about Hurtt’s coaching ability in the past. And on Thursday, when Hurtt told Strong he was staying in Louisville, Strong sent out four Twitter messages to UofL fans.

“Big news!! The Big Hurtt (Clint’s nick-name) is staying with the Cardinals,” Strong’s fi rst message read.

His second: “With Coach Hurtt decid-ing to remain at Louisville today, it speaks volumes to where our program is headed and how special this staff is.”

Strong’s third: “I have tremendous re-spect for coach Hurtt. Not only is he a great coach but a better person. We will not be a training ground for coaches.”

Strong explained the “training ground” comment in his last tweet: “It’s my job to keep this coaching staff intact, and with our tremendous athletic director (Tom Jurich) I am confi dent I can do it. Go Cards!”

Hurtt said he believes in Louisville’s po-tential and believes in Strong’s plan.

“This is a place that we love,” Hurtt said. “My wife and I are excited about this opportunity. My wife and I know there will always be opportunities coming down the road, but this is a place we feel very pas-sionate about, and we are very happy to be here.

“Everything starts off at the top. With Charlie you see a guy with great conviction that is very passionate about the program he is building. The leadership and the fo-cus and direction that he provides, I don’t know how you could not recognize that. That’s a big draw for me.

“The plans that he had from the begin-ning, the plans he laid out last year, when I came in from the University of Miami, we’ve stayed true to that. We’ve stayed on course. We’re going to continue work-ing in that direction and working on those plans - which means we are going to put

every effort into winning a Big East cham-pionship here.”

MORE THAN A RECRUITERHurtt was named National Recruiter of

the Year by ESPN.com after he helped Lou-isville land the No. 1 class in the Big Eastwith 13 Florida commitments. He’s almostperfected his ability to land the talent he’sfocused on.

“Recruiting is a trait that I have, and I do love to recruit, and I don’t want to apologizefor being really good at it, but I despise thenotion of being just a recruiter,” he said. “Iwant to be known as a great coach.”

At Louisville, Hurtt believes that he is seen as a coach fi rst, recruiter second. Buthe still hears outsiders refer to him as Louis-ville’s recruiter instead of Louisville’s defen-sive line coach.

“I clinch up every time I hear it,” Hurtt said. “It really aggravates the hell out ofme. That just bothers me. I’m not apolo-getic about my ability to recruit, and it likelymeans I will always be employed in this pro-fession, but to me it also stunts the growthof your career.”

HURTT’S A COMPETITOROn Signing Day, when Hurtt helped the

Cardinals land nine highly rated recruits inthe Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area, Strong sin-gled out Hurtt’s efforts. Strong said Hurtt’sability to take each recruit’s decision per-sonally was a big reason the Cardinals faredso well.

“I don’t accept losing, and I don’t accept being mediocre,” Hurtt said. “I want to bethe best at what I do. When I make a mis-take, I don’t want to make it a second time.I can’t really put a thumb on where that at-titude came from, but I just have a desireto be the best. The thing that helps that islearning from the people who are on ourstaff right now.”

Certainly, quite a bit of Hurtt’s competi-tive fi re came from his family (his father,Clinton, played for the New York Jets andBaltimore Colts), but he says he also learneda lot from other sources along the way.

“The head coach at Milford Academy, my prep school, was Jeff Bevino,” Hurttsaid. “He was a very fi ery and competitiveguy. He was like a rattlesnake. He could re-ally get after you.”

After Milford Academy, Hurtt was a three-year letter-winner at Miami and wasa frequent starter until an injury his seniorseason ended his playing career. He said histime at Miami as a player stoked his com-petitive fi re.

“Also, my two roommates in college were (current NFL stars) Ed Reed and Reg-gie Wayne,” Hurtt said. “They are aboutas competitive as it gets. We are all likebrothers. We are still very close now. Thecompetitive side of them brought out thecompetitive side in me, and we had nation-al championship teams at the University ofMiami.”

Defensive line coach Clint Hurtt, 32, is one of the top young assistant coaches in college football. He’s also a dynamite recruiter, but don’t get those two switched, he says: He’s a coach fi rst, teacher second, and recruiting is just part of his duties as a coach. - photo by Dave Klotz

HURTT SETS COURSE FOR PERSONAL GROWTH BY STAYING PUT


COMMENTARY BY JACK COFFEE [email protected]

Every Cardinals fan knows about Peck Hick-

man, Denny Crum and Rick Pitino and their

contributions to UofL basketball. Those three

have combined for 1,338 of the 1,607 victo-

ries in school history going into this season.

That is a .703 winning percentage.

Prior to the arrival of

Hickman in 1944, only one

coach lasted more than

four years, Tom King from

1925-1930. Hickman led

the Cards for 23 seasons

before becoming athletic

director, Crum coached for

30 years and Pitino is in his 10th season. Nine-

teen men have led the UofL team since the

fi rst game in 1911 (UofL was called the Jef-

ferson Seminary in those days), but the most

successful of the 19 wasn’t Hickman, Crum or

Pitino, but a dapper man who had his career

cut short by poor health in his fourth season

-- John Dromo.

Dromo succeeded Hickman in 1967 and

coached the Car-

dinals for three

seasons and nine

games before he

suffered a heart

attack after win-

ning at

Tulsa on Jan. 2, 1971. The Cards were 8-1

when Dromo was stricken and had beaten

Dayton, Vanderbilt, Florida and No. 12 Kan-

sas. That heart attack led to a chain of events

that eventually brought Crum, UCLA assistant

under John Wooden, to Louisville the follow-

ing year.

Dromo compiled a 68-23 record in his

three-plus seasons for the highest winning

percentage of any UofL coach -- 74.7. Pitino

ranks second with a 71.9 wining percentage

(220-86 beginning this season followed by

Hickman at 70.8 (443-183) and Crum at 69.6

(675-295).

Howard Stacey, a former UofL player and

assistant to Dromo, fi nished the 1970-71 sea-

son, with the Cards losing to Providence in the

fi rst game of the NIT. They ended up 20-9.

Stacey had done his student teaching at

Shawnee and was an assistant coach for boy’s

basketball my senior year. Unfortunately for

Howard, he lost fi ve of the last seven games in

1971 and wasn’t popular wi th

the players or fans be-

cause he abandoned

the fast-paced,

pressing style uti-

lized with such suc-

cess by Dromo.

Stacey wasn’t considered for the permanent

head coaching position and ended up taking

the job as head coach at Drake.

Dromo, who had been hired in 1948 by

the physical education department, was the

prototypical post-World War II UofL coach in

the mold of Clark Wood and John Heldman.

Initially Dromo was both an assistant football

coach to Frank Camp and basketball assistant

to Hickman. In 1951 he was asked to coach

the men’s golf team and give up football. In

spite of being a golf neophyte, Dromo agreed

and played golf for 69 straight days to learn

enough to coach. With hard work and prac-

tice he eventually was able to get his game to

a seven handicap and led the program for 38

seasons.

Basketball was Dromo’s fi rst love, and re-

cruiting was his passion. In 1950 he became

Louisville’s fi rst full-time recruiter and went

after the best players in Louisville, Indiana,

Kentucky and Ohio. His pittance of a recruit-

ing budget required that he go

only for players within

driving distance of

the school. Year after

year the Cards built

great teams with such

local players recruited

by Dromo

as Charlie Tyra, Wes Unseld, Jerry King, Butch

Beard, Denny Deeken, Henry Bacon, Ron

Thomas, Mike Lawhon and Larry Carter. He

also had connections in Cleveland and Pitts-

burgh and would recruit those areas on the

phone with calls to well-placed friends and

associates.

He had attended John Carroll College in

Northern Ohio and was able to create a pipe-

line from Chicago to Cleveland that brought

such players as Jim Morgan, Bud and Bill Ol-

sen, Bill Darragh, Harold Andrews, Fred Saw-

yer, Ron Hawley, Al Vilcheck and Jim Price to

Louisville. In 1972 fi rst-year coach Crum took

a senior-laden team recruited by Dromo to the

NCAA Final Four.

Dromo was especially effective in convincing

mothers that UofL was the place to send their

sons, promising to make sure they would be-

have, go to class and go to church. This method

was effective in persuading perhaps the great-

est player in UofL history, Westley Unseld, to

play basketball for his hometown school. Un-

seld had been booed and called ugly names

in Lexington after receiving the MVP award

at the state tournament and was eager to

leave the state. Dromo was able to con-

vince Wes, and especially his mother and

father, Cornelia and Charles, that UofL

was the place for Wes to play

so that his parents could

see him in action. His

older brother George

had gone to Kansas,

and his parents never

got to see him play.

D i s a r m i n g l y

charming, Dromo

was a classy dresser

and made an im-

DROMO IS AN UNSUNG HERO IN

RISE OF UofL BASKETBALL

JACK COFFEEJACK COFFEE


Only President’s Award Winner in Greater Louisville 10 out of 11 years!

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pressive statement with his Brooks Brothers,

Rodes and Martin’s wardrobe. After visiting a

family Dromo would send a thank you note

to the family for giving him their time. He en-

couraged his players to dress sharply, and the

school would provide blazers for the team.

Dromo often gave his discarded ties to players

and made fun of them if their white tee shirt

was visible under their shirt or if they wore

white socks when dressed in long slacks.

When Hickman gave up basketball in 1967

to become athletic director, Dromo took over

the program. In his fi rst season the team went

21-7, won the tough Missouri Valley Confer-

ence and went to the NCAA Tournament, los-

ing to top-ranked and unbeaten Houston and

Elvin Hayes (they had beaten UCLA earlier in the

season in a game played in the Astrodome).

Louisville would end the season ranked in

the top 10 in both polls. The next two seasons

under Dromo the Cards had successful records

(21-6 and 18-9), but with only 16 teams in-

vited to the NCAA at that time (only the MVC

champ made the NCAA Tournament),the

Cards played in the NIT instead.

Dromo was a coach who knew basketball

and was effective in the X’s and O’s of the

game. He was a disciplinarian and demanded

his players work hard and act right. He was

very positive in his approach to motivating

players and, as Jerry King related, would end

a huddle with such sayings as, “When Jerry

makes these foul shots.”

In his later years Dromo got into

horse racing and was a color com-

mentator for the Louisville Colonels.

Living in the Highlands, he was highly

regarded and well-liked by his players

and was often seen at some of the

better eateries in town. His contribu-

tions to the University of Louisville

should be appreciated by every fan

that loves the school as he did.

Front row (L. to R.) Greg Neely, Butch Beard, Dennis Deeken, Gary Holland, Chuck Nalavanko. Second Row (L. to R.) Stu-dent Manager, John Studer, Marv Selvy, Nat Shields, Paul Calahan and assistant coach T.L. Plain. Third row (L. to R.) Head coach John Dromo, Jerry King, Bill Perkins, Mike Grosso, Larry Ball, Ed Linonis and assistant coach Howard Stacey.


LOUSIVILLE BASKETBALL

UofL basketball coach Rick Pitino and his recruiting assistants, Steve Masiello and Tim Fuller, hosted three of the top prospects in the nation in the 2012 class (juniors in high school) last weekend.

The fi rst two are current UofL commitments: 6-foot-3 point guard Rodney Purvis and 6-7 small forward Negus Webster-Chan. Purvis is a North Carolina native currently playing with Upper Room Christian in Raleigh, N.C. Webster-Chan is from Toronto, Canada, but is playing his junior and senior seasons at Hungtington Prep in West Virginia, the same school that produced current Cardinal Gorgui Dieng. Purvis is rated in the top 10 overall in the class, and Webster-Chan is rated a top-25 small forward and No. 121 in the class. The third visitor was 6-4 shooting guard Gary Harris from Fishers, Ind. The No. 5 shooting guard in the nation, Harris is rated No. 24 overall nationally and already has offers from Louisville, Indiana, Michigan, Cincinnati, Illinois, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Minnesota, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, West Virginia, Xavier and many, many others.

Boy, Pittsburgh plays an UGLY brand of basketball, doesn’t it?

The Panthers are a rough, bruise-’em-up type of team that relies on rebounding and strong, physical defense at all fi ve positions to wear down opponents. And the Cardinals? Well, let’s just say they

are a fi nesse team. We asked UofL forward Mike Marra whether any of his teammates remind him of a Pitt-type player, and Marra laughed before pointing out Preston Knowles. “He’s a physical guard that will frustrate you like they do,” Marra said. Knowles just happens to be Louisville’s strongest player in the weight room, as well.

Louisville’s victory over Connecticut on Feb. 18 gave the

Cardinals another 20-win season, their ninth straight. Louisville is one of nine Division I schools in the nation that have won 20 or

more games in each of the past nine seasons. Kansas tops the list with 22 consecutive 20-win seasons, followed by Duke (15), Syracuse (14), Florida (13), Gonzaga (13 entering this season; currently 18-9), Texas (12), Utah State (12) and Pittsburgh(10). Pitino has won at least 20 games in a season on 19 occasions, ranking him sixth among active coaches in 20-win seasons and 15th overall. The Cards have won at least 19 games in 37 of the past 41 years.

It is GOOD to see a picture of the 1968-69 UofL basketball team

on page 9 in this issue. Not only does the picture include such outstanding local players as Butch Beard, Dennis Deeken and Jerry King, but also famous New Jersey high school star Mike Grosso,

considered the second-best high school player in the country behind Lew Alcindor in 1966. The ACC’s treatment of the University of South Carolina over its recruitment of Grosso is considered the primary reason the Gamecocks left the conference for the SEC. Also in the picture are Larry Ball, who played for the Miami Dolphins in the NFL, and Gary Holland, who coached Larry Bird in high school.

In baseball, any team can lose a game when the opposing pitcher

throws a gem. In college baseball, that axiom is even more true. Still, Louisville’s series loss to Toledo is likely going to go down as an UGLY blemish on the season. The Cardinals played so well

during the Big East-Big Ten Challenge in Florida, beating Michigan, Ohio State and Minnesota, and the pitching was tremendous. But in Friday’s home opener and Saturday’s Game 2 against Toledo, Louisville looked like a team struggling to fi nd an identity, especially at the plate. Toledo could turn out to be the MAC champion, and the Rockets could become an excellent team, but they started the season 0-3 with two losses to Canisius and one to Creighton in the week before winning the series at Louisville. UofL prevented a sweep with a 4-2 win Sunday. The Cardinals, ranked No. 16 in the nation last week, will likely tumble out of the top 25 in the polls this week.

OK, call us dense, but it seems that the Auburn community

has gone way overboard while mourning - and we actually mean mourning - the loss of two 100-year-old trees at Toomer’s Corner

on campus. The trees, which were poisoned by some Alabama fan trying to play an ugly prank, are

dying, and the Auburn community has gone wild with fury over the “tragedy.” Can we please have some perspective? They are trees, right? We like trees as much as the next hombre, but holding a candle-light vigil? Having a telethon? Forming a task force? Accepting donations on behalf of the trees? Are you serious? Just across town there likely are more than a few actual human beings fi ghting diseases in an Auburn hospital. We love the passion engendered by college athletics, but we can also recognize when that passion gets absurd. And this is it. Plus, isn’t it a tradition to cover those now-dying trees in toilet paper after each major Auburn victory? What do Auburn fans think toilet paper is made of? Trees, right? Is no one going to weep for those trees that lost their lives to make the toilet paper?

Louisville women’s basketball team is over-achieving this

season. The Cardinals, picked to fi nish eighth in the league in the preseason Big East coaches’ poll, are - as of Sunday - in a two-way

tie for fourth. The Cardinals have started two fi rst-year players - freshman point guard Shoni Schimmel and sophomore Vanderbilt transfer shooting guard Tia Gibbs -- in every game this season and have started freshman post Sheronne Vails for more than a third of the games. The Cardinals have knocked off fi ve ranked teams this season, and they’ve put a scare into a few more. We believe this is Jeff Walz’s best coaching job since he took Angel McCoughtry, Candyce Bingham and a group of scrappers to the NCAA title game two seasons ago.

Speaking of women’s basketball, the up side for sophomore

forward Asia Taylor is remarkable. The best athlete

on the team, she seems to be getting better and better with each game. On Saturday she fi nished with nine points on 4-of-8 shooting and three rebounds in 23 minutes. “That is exactly what we see in practice,” Walz said. “Asia played really aggressive. I was very excited for her. I think she is a summer away from being able to do that on a consistent basis for us. That’s why we recruited the kid. I’ve told everybody she broke her ankle and tore every ligament her senior year (in high school) in January, and it set her back a year. Now she has fi nally started to feel comfortable.” Taylor’s raw athleticism reminds us of former UofL star and WNBA No. 1 pick Angel McCoughtry as a freshman.

UofL women’s basketball fi nished the season second in the

nation in average attendance per game. The Cardinals drew 9,753 fans to their fi nal home game against the last-place team in the

league (Seton Hall) in a remarkable show of support for the program. “We go to some places and there are only 100 or 200 people there,” junior Monique Reid said. “Then we come here and play in front of 15,000. It’s an extra lift.” Walz knows that the level of support his team has received this season and last isn’t normal for women’s basketball. “It’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s really hard to put into words the appreciation that I have. I told our players in the locker room before the game that we are very fortunate to have the support that we have. We have these wonderful fans, administration, and marketing people. It’s just wonderful to go out and have the opportunity to play in front of 10,000. We should fi nish second in the country in attendance, which is remarkable. I tell them they need to make sure they are appreciative and thankful. You go out on the road and play in front of 400. It’s a great honor to come out here and have 10,000 a night.”

Louisville football fans will have a GOOD opportunity to make

an easy road trip next season. The full football schedule was released on Friday, and a prime date is the Cardinals’ Oct. 15 trip

to Cincinnati. Not only is the game just an hour and a half away, the game was moved from Cincinnati’s small, uncomfortable Nippert Stadium to Paul Brown Stadium, home of the Bengals. That means UofL fans will have access to more tickets, and it means we’ll all be able to watch the game in comfort instead of on the cold, hard concrete bleachers that Nippert is famous for. We foresee Louisville fans by the thousands heading up I-71 for that game.

GOOD

GOOD

GOOD

UGLY

UGLY

C O M M E N T A R Y B Y H O W I E L I N D S E Y

GOOD

SIMPLY STUPIDUK offi cials have started a review committee to oversee the Athletic Department after some Trustees were upset

about Mitch Barnhart’s contract being extended by President Lee Todd just a few months before Todd’s retirement. This Athletic Oversight committee seems like a really bad idea to us - more red tape and less decisive leadership from the AD. There is already an Athletics Board and a Board of Trustees, and now this?

TWEET OF THE WEEK@SportsBizMiss Kristi DoshMore brilliant #Louisville marketing ... a reversible shirt for upcoming red-out and white-out

GOOD

GOOD

GOOD

BAD


LOUISVILLE BASKETBALL VS. PITT PHOTO GALLERY

Most dressed in white, 22,758 fans packed into the KFC Yum! Center for Sunday afternoon’s Louisville-Pittsburgh game. Of Louisville’s last fi ve “Whiteout” promotions, four have been against top-10 teams. The Cardinals are 4-1 in those games with the only loss coming last season, 92-84 to No. 4 Villanova. - photo by Dave Klotz

PAGE 12 LOUISVILLE SPORTSREPORT FEBRUARY 3, 2011


LOUISVILLE BASKETBALL VS. PITT PHOTO GALLERY

In honor of the Whiteout, an actor dressed as Colonel Sanders was in attendance dressed in his white suit with his trademark string-tie. The offi cial KFC mascot drew a few double-takes from the UofL players as they warmed up before the game. - photo by Shelley Feller

Junior center Terrence Jennings hit just 1-of-7 shots and fi nished with three points. He had six rebounds.

- photo by Dave Klotz

Sophomore point guard Peyton Siva put in this layup for two of his 14 points. After going

just 5-for-11 (.455) from the line over the previous fi ve games, Siva hit all six of his free

throws against Pitt. - photo by Sheller Feller

Sophomore power forward Rakeem Buckles went down with a knee injury in the fi rst half. Sunday night, UofL confi rmed Buckles will miss the rest of the season with a torn ACL. - photo by Shelley Feller

Louisville students donned white shirts and KFC bucket hats in honor of the Whiteout. - photo by Dave Klotz

FAST FACT: Louisville has now defeated four consecutive AP top-fi ve opponents for the second time in school history and fi rst time since 1956. This season, the Cards beat #5 Connecticut and #4 Pittsburgh, and last season the Cards beat #3 Syracuse in early Febru-ary and then again when they were ranked #1 in early March. The Cards took down Dayton three times during the 1955-56 season (when the Flyers were ranked sec-ond, second, and third, respectively) and then downed #5 St. Louis in Freedom Hall on Dec. 28, 1956. U of L has never beaten fi ve straight top-fi ve teams.


LOUISVILLE BASEBALL

By Howie Lindsey University of Louisville baseball coach Dan

McDonnell has a nickname for All-American second baseman Ryan Wright: “The Punch-Clocker.”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it is. McDonnell says Wright can be counted on to work hard at every practice, every workout and every drill.

“He is like a business person,” McDonnell said. “He’d come in, put his work in, punch the clock and put in some extra time and then went on and got the job done in the class-room, too. He’s always been more mature than most players in college baseball.”

A team’s top player of-ten isn’t its hardest worker. That is not the case with Wright. The preseason All-American is clearly Louis-ville’s top every-day player, and he’s also one of the easiest to coach.

“I credit Kevin and Karen, his parents,” Mc-Donnell said. “I said as a

freshman he had a business-like approach. He would show up every day and put in his work.”

Wright had a phenomenal freshman sea-son. While some ultra-talented prep stars have a tough time adjusting to the next level, Wright seemed to thrive.

He earned freshman All-American honors from Louisville Slugger, NCBWA and Ping!after hitting .335 with fi ve home runs and 66 RBIs while playing in all 65 games. He played wher-ever McDonnell needed him - right fi eld, left fi eld, third base and shortstop.

“I really had no idea (how good I could be) coming out of high school,” Wright said. “I wasn’t highly recruited. Coming here, I had a bunch of struggles early on just like all fresh-men. It was just a matter of working hard, and I was able to have some success my freshman year and then I realized that if I could continue

to go at the pace that I was going then I could be looking at a pretty nice career.”

Last season he picked right up where he left off, earning fi rst-team All-Big East and second-team All-America honors from Base-ball America after hitting .366 with 80 RBIs. His 16 home runs were second on the team, and he started 60 games in the middle infi eld as he transitioned to second base.

As good as he was his fi rst two seasons, and with one year of college baseball left be-fore he’s eligible for the Major League Draft, Wright knows he needs to have a big season this year.

“It is just everything,” Wright said when asked what he is working on. “I don’t think any player feels like they are complete, and defi nitely not at this level. I mean, maybe they feel complete at the major league level, but not at this level. I need to keep working on my defense. I haven’t played a full year at second base yet, so that is probably the biggest thing. I just need to continue to learn the game and get better in all areas.”

McDonnell loves Wright’s offense. Through the fi rst fi ve games this season Wright was hitting .421 with eight hits in 19 at-bats, three doubles, a triple, three RBIs and a pair of runs scored.

“I’ve always been known as an offensive player,” Wright said. “But I can always get better at that. I am not swinging it like I want to right now, but that’s the good thing about baseball- there is almost always another game tomorrow. I’m excited to see more pitching and get better.”

McDonnell said he has confi dence that even if Wright has a slump, he’ll snap out of it quickly.

“Offensively, you never have it made,” Mc-Donnell said. “As good as he is offensively, you can’t ever take that for granted. That’s what he is good at. Whenever he has lost his swing, he got it back in a very short time because of his work ethic. He’s sharp, and he understands what his swing is about.”

McDonnell explained that Wright’s biggest defi ciency is lack of experience in the fi eld.

“In this game you always want to get bet-ter,” McDonnell said. “On defense, he’s only played second base for a short time, so he has a lot to learn there, but he’ll just keep getting better and better. He’ll get better at running the bases. We are always working on jumps, and we are always working on stealing bas-es.”

With the draft just a few months away, Wright is concentrating on making the most of his college season fi rst. But McDonnell said Wright is acting like a pro in many areas.

“I call him a professional, and to me that is the ultimate compliment,” McDonnell said. “When you call an amateur a true profes-sional, it means that you believe that amateur approaches the game with a lot of respect for the game and a lot of respect for his oppo-nent. He shows up to get better day in and day out.”

Wright said he learned that from watching the work ethic of such current professional players as former UofL teammates Chris Dominguez and Adam Duvall and former major leaguer Chris Burke, a Louisville native who trained with the Cardinals in the off-season.

“They bring that approach that you need to have,” Wright said. “And then other guys like Chris Dominguez coming back in the off-season. Those are all guys that I learned so much from. He took me under his wing when I was a freshman, and he was a superstar. He was an absolutely great role model. It is guys like that that teach you how to go about your business and how to handle the game.”

LUNCHPAIL U-S-AWright spent last summer playing for the

USA Baseball Collegiate National Team. He was Team USA’s top everyday hitter with a .361 average, two homers, 12 RBIs and 18 runs scored.

“I hope he learned that he is one of the best players in the country,” McDonnell said.

“Baseball is such a mental game, you wantto make sure you belong. When you play onTeam USA and you have such success, you re-alize, I am as good as any of the other playersin the country. I’m doing it the right way, andI’ll continue doing things the right way andI’ll be playing this game for a long time. I’veplayed with the best, and I have performedwell on the big stage.”

Wright says the experience taught him a lot. “I learned that I can go out and com-pete with the best players in the country ...and have success,” he said. “We were play-ing almost a professional schedule with a lotof games and lots of travel. It was just a reallyneat experience and something I’ll rememberfor a long time.”

He started 17 of 19 games for Team USA and was named the top designated hitterat the 2010 World University Baseball Cham-pionships in Tokyo. In those six games he hit.458 (11 for 24) with a home run and sevenRBIs.

Playing for Team USA would give most 20-year-olds a big head. Not Wright.

“I don’t think I have really changed much over the years,” he said. “I guess it is justabout how my parents raised me. I just needto go out there and get my work in. I want toshow up every day to do work. That’s just anattitude that I have. I don’t ride the highs toohigh or the lows too low. I like to play in thatmiddle ground.”

If Wright stays consistent this season, he stands to make a lot of money as a draft-eligible junior. He has been rated among thetop-100 draft prospects by several publica-tions and was recently listed among the top10 draft-eligible middle infi elders in college bybaseballdraftreport.com.

“I feel like he is going to play the game for a long time because he approaches the gamewith such consistency,” McDonnell said. “He’svery even-keeled, and he always seems to per-form better as the games get bigger.”

HOWIE LINDSEYHOWIE LINDSEY

LOUISVILLE’S ‘PUNCH-CLOCKER’ DOING THINGS THE WRIGHT WAYLOUISVILLE’S ‘PUNCH-CLOCKER’ DOING THINGS THE WRIGHT WAY


LOUISVILLE SWIMMING AND DIVING PHOTO GALLERYRECRUITING NOTEBOOK

CARDS LAND FIRST 2012 FOOTBALL COMMITBy Jeff Wafford Tyrone Pearson, a 6-foot-3, 265-pound

defensive lineman from Seneca H.S., knew last Friday that he planned to attend the University of Louisville, but he wanted to speak with head coach Charlie Strong be-fore making his commitment public. Pear-son did just that on Sunday, sitting down with Strong and other members of the UofL coaching staff to make his pledge of-fi cial.

“I wanted to make sure all of the coach-es were on the same page as me, and we were, before I made my decision public,” Pearson said Sunday after watching the Cardinals’ basketball team defeat Pitts-

burgh in overtime. “I sat down with pretty much everybody, because I had talked with the assistant coaches on Friday. Today I sat down with Coach Strong and I told him I was ready commit to the University of Louisville.”

Pearson said Strong’s reaction included a big

smile and a look of relief after picking up a pledge from a player who also has of-fers from Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Middle Tennessee State, Tennessee, UCF and Wis-consin.

“We are supposed to be signing about six defensive linemen this year, and I’ve al-ready taken one of those spots,” Pearson said. “They aren’t that deep there this year, and they want to go out there and recruit some big names at that position, and I wanted to be one of those guys.”

In the end, staying home and playing for his hometown school was the biggest in-fl uence on Pearson, who already has been named one of Rivals.com’s Top 250 players to watch in the class of 2012.

“Louisville was always a dream school for me,” Pearson said. “Growing up in Louisville, you got to see some great peo-ple come out of there, and they are peo-ple you look up to, like Michael Bush and some of those other types of guys. At a young age you want to grow up to be like those guys.”

Pearson said his plans for this spring and summer include attending some NIKE camps and combines so he can improve his ranking. “In the end when it comes down to Louisville’s class ranking, I’ll be one of the big names on Louisville’s list,” he said.

Pearson said he also plans to recruit some of the city’s other top players for the Cards, including all-state performers Anthony Wales (a running back from Cen-tral H.S.) and DarMontre Warr (an athlete from duPont Manual H.S.).

“We’re great friends,” Pearson said of the pair. “We grew up playing on the same football team and going to the same schools in the summer. We have a great relationship. I’ll just tell them some of the things that got me here and some of the things about where we’re going as a pro-gram.”

One of the things Pearson said he will

sell to other recruits is the UofL coaching staff.

“Every day they are working hard,” he said. “There isn’t a moment or second when they take a break. You don’t take any days off. Even though it’s a young class coming in this year, they want to improve. Even though they are coming off of win-ning a bowl game, they can improve off that. Being in the same class together, it could be kind of like what happened at Al-abama. They weren’t that big starting off, but in the end they won a national cham-pionship.”

HURTT’S STAYING PAYING OFFIt was big news on the recruiting front

last week when Clint Hurtt, ESPN’s Nation-al Recruiter of the Year and Rivals.com’s Big East Recruiter of the Year, announced he was turning down a job offer from Auburn to remain at Louisville.

Hurtt, who came to Louisville with Strong after a stint at Miami (Fla.), was a huge part of the Cardinals’ garnering their highest-rated recruiting class ever in Febru-ary, and he also did a great job coaching the defensive line for the Cards last sea-son.

Keeping him on staff will defi nitely help recruiting. It’s no coincidence Pearson’s de-cision came only a day after the announce-ment that Hurtt was remaining at UofL.

“It had a big thing to do with it,” Pear-son said. “At fi rst when I heard he was looking at Auburn I was kind skeptical about going to Louisville. He was a big part of my recruitment and got me interested in going to Louisville. His background and him being so young, he can really connect to us. Hearing he would stay, turning down Auburn, not many people are willing to do that, with them being national champions and all that. That says a lot about his com-mitment and how he wants to grow the program.”

UOFL RECRUITS IN DERBY CLASSICLouisville fans will get a chance to see all

four 2011 UofL basketball signees up close and personal in a few weeks during the an-

nual Derby Festival Basketball Classic. Chane Behanan (a 6-7 power forward

from Bowling Green, Ky.), Wayne Blacks-hear (a 6-5 guard/forward from Chicago), Angel Nunez (a 6-6 forward from New York City currently playing at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Mass.), and Zach Price (a 6-11 center from Lakewood, Ohio, cur-rently playing at Louisville Jeffersontown H.S.) will all play in the all-star game, which is slated for Friday, April 22, at 7 p.m. in the KFC Yum! Center.

Behanan and Blackshear, both also Mc-Donald’s All-American selections, are fi ve-star players, while Price is rated as a four-star and Nunez a three-star.

The game also will feature Indiana signee Cody Zeller (a 6-11 center from Washing-ton, Ind.) and Western Kentucky signees George Fant (a 6-6 forward) and Derrick Gordon (a 6-2 guard), who both hail from Bowling Green.

“In my 25 years of recruiting players for the Basketball Classic, this is the highest-caliber roster we’ve ever had,” event or-ganizer Dan Owens said. “These are future college and NBA stars who will bring a special excitement to the fi rst Classic game played in the new arena.”

Recent Derby Festival participants have included such UofL players as Gorgui Di-eng, Terrence Williams, Mike Marra, RussSmith, Elisha Justice, Rakeem Buckles andPeyton Siva.

The players also will participate in the Night of the Future Stars at Bellarmine Uni-versity on Thursday, April 21, which featuresa two-on-two tournament, a dunk contest,and a three-point shooting contest.

PITINO HOSTS BIG-TIME VISITORSThe White-Out game against Pittsburgh

last Sunday was impressive to a national TVaudience, and it had to be impressive toseveral recruits in attendance as well. RickPitino and his coaching staff hosted threetalented juniors on unoffi cial visits, includ-ing two players who already have givenverbal commitments to the Cardinals, aswell as Behanan.

Five-star guard Rodney Purvis (6-5, Ra-leigh, N.C.) and three-star forward NegusWebster-Chan (6-6, Huntington, W.Va.)both committed to the Cards in December.Over the weekend, the pair were joined byGary Harris, a 6-4 guard from Fishers, Ind.,who is rated as a four-star player. Harrisalso is considering Illinois, Indiana, Michi-gan State and several others.

JEFF WAFFORDJEFF WAFFORD

Rodney Purvis, the top point guard in the 2012 class, visited Louisville over the weekend. - photo by Rivals.com


KFC Yum! Center OPENING PHOTO GALLERYSELECTED FALL SPORTS SCHEDULESLOUISVILLE BASKETBALL

C A R D S A M O N G L E A D E R S O N 2 5 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y O F M A J O R C H A N G E

PITINO’S ARC OF SUCCESS HAS ALWAYS INCLUDED THREE-POINTERSBy Russ Brown Rick Pitino often stops practice when one

of his University of Louisville players passes up an open three-point shot, and he would probably stop games for the same reason if he could.

This is the 25th anniversary of one of the most signifi cant changes in college basket-ball history, a revolutionary move that was met by many with disdain, called a novelty, silly and worse.

But 25 years ago at Providence, as a young, up-and-coming coach, Pitino em-braced the three-point shot and used it to help propel the Friars to the 1987 Final Four. He was a pioneer of sorts on the success-ful use of the shot. A quarter-century and a couple of college stops later, the three-pointer is still a crucial part of his offensive

arsenal at Louisville.The Cardinals lead the

Big East and are 10th nationally in three-point shots made at 8.9 per game. Among teams from the power confer-ences, only Washington (third, 9.2), Northwestern (seventh, 9.1) and Boston College (eighth, 9.0) have

made more, and UofL is the only Big East team in the top 50.

Going into Sunday’s game with Pitts-burgh, Louisville had taken 674 treys, by far the most of any team in its conference. Providence is second at 580. The 674 at-tempts ranks eighth among the 335 teams in NCAA Division I and is tops among schools from the major conferences.

However, UofL’s shooting percentage of 36.9 (249 of 674), while good, ranks only 68th. The leader among major programs is Arizona of the Pac-10 at 40.8 (224 of 549).

Junior forward Kyle Kuric and senior guard Preston Knowles have combined to take almost half of the Cards’ threes and, as you might expect, they’re two of the most deadly. But nearly every player on UofL’s roster has the green light from behind the arc, the exceptions being frontcourt players Terrence Jennings, Stephan Van-Treese and Gorgui Dieng. Dieng has attempted one, Jennings and Van-Treese none.

Kuric, who is especially dangerous from both corners, leads the team with a 45.6 three-point shooting percentage (52 of 114). But Knowles -- who doesn’t seem to have a favorite place on the fl oor and doesn’t need as much time as Kuric to get his shot off -- has hit the most with 82 (of 205 for 40.0 percent).

Junior guard Chris Smith has hit 29 of 69 for 42.0 percent, sophomore point guard Peyton Siva 22 of 79 for 27.8, and even 6-8 sophomore power forward Rakeem Buck-les has added the trifecta as an occasional weapon this season, with 11 of 25 for 44 percent despite missing 12 games with a broken fi nger.

Going into the season, sophomore Mike Marra was expected to be the Cards’ best marksman from behind the arc, but he has had trouble getting untracked -- partly due to injuries -- and is shooting only 28.2 per-cent (35 of 124).

Pitino said he has tweaked his approach to three-pointers since his days at Providence -- what he calls “subtle things” -- but that his overall philosophy is basically still the same. A player is more likely to be chastised for passing up an open trey than he is for

missing several.“We relied more back then on a point

guard getting us threes with Billy Donovan,” Pitino said of Providence. “He got us threes off pick and rolls and dished to everybody. This team relies on each other to get threes. There are certain teams that aren’t good shooting teams, but we are recruiting peo-ple we think can be a threat from outside, as well as inside.”

Without a point guard with Donovan’s skills -- although Siva is rapidly developing into an outstanding force at that position -- the Cards have relied on their unselfi sh-ness and passing skills to get good looks at the basket. They are second in the Big East in assists and seventh nationally at 17.4 per game.

“Because we’re a good passing team, we’re a good shooting team,” Pitino said. “The correlation is defi nitely there. Because they pass well, they shoot well, and Preston and Kyle are two guys who can hit it with great consistency.”

Maybe because they see it so much in practice, the Cards have been good at de-fending the three-point shot, ranking fi fth in the conference in three-point defense at 31.8 percent.

When the three-point shot was instituted by the NCAA 25 years ago, it was greeted with harsh criticism from coaches far and wide. But today it is hard to imagine the game without the arc.

Over the years the three-point shot has become as much a part of the game as the dunk, adding excitement while altering ev-erything from recruiting to the way basket-ball is played and coached at all levels.

It has been called the great equalizer be-

cause it often allows teams to compete with opponents who have much more size and athletic ability. An argument can be made that the three-point shot is the most signifi -cant change in the modern era of college basketball.

The three-pointer, along with repealing the dunking ban in 1976, adding the shot clock in 1985 and perhaps freshman eligibil-ity in 1972, have all affected the game im-measurably.

The three-point shot made the game more entertaining by spreading the fl oor and cre-ating more opportunities to get into transi-tion off long rebounds. It gave trailing teams a no-lead-is-safe hope (see UofL’s comeback from an 18-point defi cit against Marquette in the fi nal fi ve minutes).

It forced coaches to alter tactics, getting their players to guard the entire fl oor instead of just clogging the lane. It expanded play-ers’ skill sets, with almost everyone learning to shoot from the perimeter. It has reshaped basketball for good.

“It’s more exciting because of the three-point shot -- much more exciting,” Pitino said. “There’s much more strategy to the game offensively and defensively because of the three-point shot. I think it has helped the game.”

Before the arc was installed, teams were set if they had a dominant center such as Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing or Virginia with Ralph Sampson. Now, with the game stretched, the perimeter player is just as im-portant as the post player. Nearly everyone can shoot from downtown, even players 6-9 or taller, something unheard of in the pre-arc days.

“Back before the three-point shot, if you

could get a Patrick Ewing, if you could geta great inside player, you were going todominate college basketball,” Pitino said.“But now it’s put a great emphasis on thetwo, the three, the one (guards and smallforwards), and a four-man (power forward)who can pick and pop would be great.”

When it was fi rst instituted in 1986-87, D-I teams attempted an average of 9.2three-point shots -- making 3.5 -- comparedto 18.2 attempts in 2009-10, the fi rst seasonthe line was moved back a foot to 20 feet,9 inches.

At Providence Pitino drilled his players in shooting the trey, encouraged them to doso, turned Donovan loose and added offen-sive sets to create outside opportunities.

“That fi rst year I wanted to take 15 per game and lead the country,” he said. “Mygoal was to take 15 and make fi ve or six.Then we played the Russians and they wereused to it and they took 28 that night, andI realized that my number was way too low,that we needed to take 20 to 25 threes pergame, and we did.”

That philosophy allowed the Friars to compete in the bruising Big East, wherecoaches such as John Thompson at George-town, Rollie Massimino at Villanova and LouCarnesecca at St. John’s were reluctant toshoot the three.

“They didn’t like it,” Pitino said. “They were basketball purists. They thought thestrategy was to go inside and go backdoor, and I was just delighted with the factthat they didn’t want to take it. They wereagainst it, and that was a big edge I had atthat time.”

And it’s still an edge to a lesser extent these days for Pitino at Louisville.

Louisville senior Preston Knowles has 181 three-pointers during his four-year career. He has a 37.5 career three-point shooting percentage. The single three he hit against Pitt broke a tie for seventh place with Francisco Garcia on the all-time career three-pointers list for UofL. - photo by Shelley Feller



LOUISVILLE BASKETBALL PREVIEW - WEST VIRGINIA

MOUNTAINEERS WILL BE SEEKING TO EVEN THE SCORE

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Saturday, March 5Louisville at WVU12 Noon, ESPN2

By Rick CushingWhen UofL rallied from an 11-point defi cit with 15:09 to

play to beat West Virginia 55-54 on Jan. 26, it marked the Car-dinals’ second big comeback victory in 11 days (they rallied from 18 down with six minutes to go to beat Marquette 71-70 on Jan. 15). Both those games were in the KFC Yum! Center, however.

This Saturday the Cards will travel to Morgantown for a rematch with the Mountaineers, who will be holding a moun-tain-like grudge. Especially junior guard Truck Bryant, who uncharacteristically missed four straight free throws in the fi nal 2:48. Bryant is an 80.3 percent free-throw shooter.

The Mountaineers also will be reminded by coach Bob Hug-gins that they got good shots against UofL down the stretch but just plain missed them. “We missed all kinds of shots around the rim,” he complained that day. “My two returning starters from last season (Bryant and Kevin Jones) were 4 of 21 from the fi eld. When you don’t make a shot, it’s hard to win.”

WVU also was without its leading scorer and top three-point threat that day as 6-4 senior guard Casey Mitchell was serving a suspension. He scored 22 points and was the only WVU player in double fi gures in a 71-58 loss at Pittsburgh last Thursday.

The Mountaineers have had an up-and-down season. They attained a No. 21 national ranking after beating then-No. 8 Purdue 68-64 on national TV on Jan. 16, but they lost to in-state rival Marshall 75-71 three days later. They are 6-5 since then and are 18-10, 9-7 after a 65-54 victory at Rutgers last Sunday. As of Sunday they are currently in a fi ve-way tie for seventh place in the Big East.

WVU will play host to UConn Wednesday before entertain-ing the Cards on Saturday to close out the regular season for both teams.

COACHHuggins is a familiar face to UofL fans, having coached

for 16 seasons at Cincinnati (1989-2004), which was the Cardinals’ rival in the Metro Conference and C-USA. He led the Bearcats to the NCAA Tournament his fi nal 14 years there, including to the Final Four in 1992. He left Cincinnati under a cloud (improper conduct involving alcohol), sat out a season before coaching at Kansas State in 2006-07, then left to take over at WVU, his alma mater. This is his fourth season there, and he’s 98-40, winning the Big East Conference Tournament last season and advancing to the Final Four after knocking off Kentucky in the Elite Eight. Overall he’s 688-251 in 28-plus seasons. His teams are known for a rugged style of play.

GUARDSMitchell, who missed three games while on suspension,

leads the Mountaineers in scoring average at 15.1 ppg, and is averaging 3.1 rpg, sixth on the team. He’s shooting 43.8 percent overall, 38.7 percent on treys. He’s made 58 treys and, despite the games he missed, has almost double the number of treys as his closest teammate (Bryant with 30). He’s a good free-throw shooter at 89.0 percent, tied for second in the Big East and 20th in the country, but he has more turnovers (42)

than assists (33).The 6-2 Bryant is third on the team at 10.8 ppg and sec-

ond in assists at 3.1 a game. He’s shooting just 33.5 percent overall, 33.0 on treys, but 80.3 percent on free throws. He had a forgettable game against the Cards on Jan. 26 – nine points on 1-of-8 shooting, 6 of 10 free throws, missing his fi nal four, 0 assists and four turnovers.

Joe Mazzula, a 6-2 senior, has started 10 games and is av-eraging 6.8 ppg, 3.9 rpg and a team-leading 3.85 assists. He is second in the Big East and is 26th in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.48/1. He’s shooting 45.9 percent overall but just 19.0 percent on treys (4 for 21), although he was 2 for 3 on treys against the Cards, when he scored a team-high 18 points, all in the fi rst half. He made 8 of 10 shots in the fi rst half but was 0 for 2 in the second. Both he and Bryant are good defenders.

Other backcourt subs are 6-5 sophomore Dalton Pepper (4.1 ppg) and 6-3 senior Jonnie West (3.2 ppg), a 41.7 percent three-point shooter who is the son of WVU and NBA great Jerry West.

BIG MENKevin Jones, a 6-8 junior, is second on the team at 12.6

ppg and leads at 6.9 rpg. He’s shooting 43.1 percent overall but just 25.9 percent on treys. He had eight points on 3-of-13 shooting and seven rebounds against the Cards on Jan. 26.

John Flowers, a skinny 6-7, 215-pound senior, is fourth on the team at 9.4 ppg and second at 6.3 rpg. He’s shooting 47.3 percent overall, 33.3 on treys, and he leads in blocked shots at 2.41 per game, which is second in the Big East and 23rd in the country. He had fi ve points and nine rebounds against the Cards on Jan. 26.

Deniz Kilicli, a rugged 6-9 sophomore from Turkey, rounds out the starting frontline and is averaging 7.0 ppg and 4.1 rpg. He’s shooting 50.3 percent and has not tried a three-point shot all season. He’s also not a very adept ball-handler, with 25 assists and 47 turnovers.

The top frontcourt subs are 6-10 freshman Kevin Noreen (2.6 ppg, 1.7 rpg) and 6-7 senior Cam Thoroughman (2.4 ppg, 3.4 rpg).

MISC.WVU leads the Big East and is seventh in the country in

three-point defense at 28.6 percent. The Cards hit 8 of 24 treys on Jan. 26 for 33.3 percent. WVU is 44th in the country in assists at 15.1 per game, 33rd in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.25/1, 45th in turnovers per game at 12.0 and 70th in overall fi eld-goal defense at 41.1 percent.

ALL-TIME SERIESUofL and West Virginia have met 11 times dating to 1959,

with the Cards holding an 8-3 advantage. They have won fi ve of the last six meetings. The schools are 2-2 at WVU, with UofL prevailing there 62-59 on March 7, 2009, to close out the regu-lar season and clinch the Big East regular-season title. That UofL team went on to win the Big East Tournament and at-tain the overall No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament but lost to Michigan State in the Elite Eight to fi nish 31-6.

NO NAME POS YR EXP. HT/WT HOMETOWN 2 CAM THOROUGHMAN F SR. 2V 6-7/235 PORTSMOUTH, OH (CLAY HS)

4 JOHNNIE WEST G FR. HS 6-3/195 MEMPHIS, TN

5 KEVIN JONES F JR. HS 6-8/255 MOUNT VERNON, NY (MOUNT VERNON)

12 KENNY ROSS G FR. HS 6-0/175 FURLONG, PA (ACADEMY OF NEW CHURCH)

14 NOAH COTTRILL G FR. 6-3/195 LOGAN, WV (LOGAN HS)

15 BRYAN LOWTHER G SO. HS 6-6/215 EDINBORO, PA (EDINBORO)

21 JOE MAZZULLA G SR. 2V 6-2/200 JOHNSTON, RI (BISHOP HENDRICKEN)

25 DARRYL BRYANT G JR. HS 6-2/205 BROOKLYN, NY (ST. RAYMOND’S)

30 DANNY JENNINGS F SO. HS 6-8/270 STATEN ISLAND, NY (ST. THOMAS MORE, CT.)

32 DALTON PEPPER G SO. HS 6-5/230 LEVITTOWN, PA (PENNSBURY)

33 CASEY MITCHELL G SR. 2V 6-4/220 SAVANNAH, GA (CHIPOLA J.C.)

34 KEVIN NOREEN F FR. 6-10/235 MINNEAPOLIS, MN (MINNESOTA TRANSITIONS CHARTER SCHOOL)

41 JOHN FLOWERS F SR. 2V 6-7/215 WALDORF, MD (ST. MARY’S RYKEN)

42 DENIZ KILICLI F SO. HS 6-9/270 ISTANBUL, TURKEY (MOUNTAIN STATE ACADEMY, W.VA.)

2010-11 WEST VIRGINIA BASKETBALL ROSTER

Coach: Bob HugginsLast season: 31-7, 13-5 Big East

Overall Record: 688-251 (29TH SEASON)At WVU: 98-40 (FOURTH SEASON)

Huggins has taken two schools to the Final Four, Cincinnati and West Virginia

DARRYL BRYANTDARRYL BRYANT

2010-11 SCHEDULEDATE OPPONENT TIME NOVEMBER Nov. 12, 2010 Oakland W, 95-71 Nov. 18, 2010 Davidson1 W, 84-70Nov. 27, 2010 VMI W, 82-66

DECEMBER Dec. 1, 2010 American W, 71-50 Dec. 4, 2010 at Miami-FL L, 79-76 Dec. 7, 2010 Robert Morris W, 82-49 Dec. 12, 2010 at Duquesne W, 64-61 Dec. 18, 2010 Cleveland St. W, 74-63 Dec. 29, 2010 St. John’s L, 81-71

JANUARY Jan. 1, 2011 at Marquette L, 79-74 Jan. 4, 2011 at DePaul W, 67-65 Jan. 8, 2011 at Georgetown W, 65-59 Jan. 13, 2011 Providence W, 93-63 Jan. 16, 2011 Purdue W, 68-64 Jan. 19, 2011 Marshall L, 75-71 Jan. 23, 2011 South Florida W, 56-46 Jan. 26, 2011 at Louisville L, 55-54 Jan. 29, 2011 at Cincinnati W, 66-55

JANUARY Feb. 2, 2011 Seton Hall W, 56-44 Feb. 5, 2011 at Villanova L, 66-50 Feb. 7, 2011 Pittsburgh L, 71-66 Feb. 12, 2011 DePaul W, 82-71 Feb. 14, 2011 at Syracuse L, 63-52 Feb. 19, 2011 Notre Dame W, 72-58 Feb. 24, 2011 at Pittsburgh L, 71-58 Feb. 27, 2011 at Rutgers W, 65-54

MARCH Mar. 2, 2011 Connecticut 7:00 pm ET Mar. 5, 2011 Louisville 12:00 pm ET


LOUISVILLE TRACK AND FIELD2007 CARDINAL CARAVANKFC Yum! Center OPENING PHOTO GALLERYSELECTED FALL SPORTS SCHEDULESBIG EAST NOTEBOOK

By Rick CushingProvidence’s Marshon Brooks set a Big East

scoring record with 52 points last Wednesday against No. 9 Notre Dame, although the Friars lost to the visiting Irish 94-93 at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.

Brooks, a 6-foot-5 senior, hit 20 of 28 shots, including 6 of 10 from three-point range, made 6 of 10 free throws, and he also had four rebounds, four assists, one steal and only one turnover.

“I was feeling it,” Brooks said in an under-statement. “I knew it was going to be tough to stop me. I was trying to put my team on my back.”

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said he feared a “go-off night” by Brooks, and that’s exactly what he witnessed. He started 6-foot-8 Tyrone Nash on Brooks, mixed in some box-and-one, some traps and eventually settled on senior guard Ben Hansbrough for crunch time.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a perfor-mance like that,” Brey said. “That was stag-gering. I’m just thrilled we escaped.”

Said Irish forward Tim Abromaitis: “There was no way to stop him. He scored pretty much every way you can score, on pretty much all of us, pretty much throughout the whole game. I would have liked to say there was something we could have done, but we tried to do every-thing against him.”

Brooks scored 15 points in the fi nal 2:57 when a Friars rally fell just short. It was the most points ever scored against Notre Dame (22-5, 11-4).

And when did he know he had something special going on?

“I looked up when I had 49 and it said I had just broken the Big East record,” he said.

“And what went through your mind?” he was asked.

“I’m hot,” he said.It may have helped that neither team was

playing much defense. Notre Dame, led by Hansbrough with a career-high 32 points and Abromaitis with 28, shot 56.1 percent over-all, 40.9 percent on treys. Providence (14-14, 3-12) shot 54.4 percent overall, 52.4 on treys.

In the end, however, Hansbrough, who made 10 of 13 shots, including 3 of 5 treys, put a big asterisk on Brooks’ performance.

“He got hot,” Hansbrough said. “He made some really tough shots against us. At the end of the day, it wasn’t enough.”

The previous Big East scoring record was es-tablished in the same building when PC’s Eric Murdock scored 48 against Pitt on Jan. 23, 1991.

The Marshon Brooks Show will be coming to the KFC Yum! Center on Wednesday when Providence takes on the Cards. The Friars lost 86-62 at Marquette last Sunday. Brooks scored just 17 points.

CINCINNATI STEPPING UPIf Mick Cronin is right, the University of Cin-

cinnati punched its ticket to the NCAA Tourna-ment last Wednesday night.

The UC coach said earlier last week that he believed a victory at No. 11 Georgetown would put the Bearcats in the tournament for the fi rst time since 2005.

UC then delivered a 58-46 victory over the Hoyas at the Verizon Center, ending a streak of 22 straight losses to ranked teams on the road dating to the 2003-04 season. The Bearcats improved to 22-6 overall, 9-6 in the Big East and now have four wins over RPI top-25 teams, including two on the road. They at-tained nine Big East victories for the fi rst time

since joining the league in 2005.Unlike recent seasons that were marred

by late-season collapses, UC has won three straight games and four of its last fi ve. The three-game streak started with a victory over UofL on Feb. 16. It was game the Bearcats “had to win,” Cronin told his team at the time.

Of the victory at Georgetown, Cronin said: “Obviously, it was a big win for us. George-town was number one in our conference in RPI, I believe, going into last night. So it was a big win for our team. We played excellent defense and did a great job of taking some things away from Georgetown. We’ve got to continue to try to improve. We’re playing pret-ty well right now. We’re excited about the way we’re playing. We’ve won three in a row head-ing into UConn on Sunday…. Sunday is going to be a big one for us. There’s a lot of teams in the middle of the pack, trying to fi ght to get a bye in the Big East Tournament. We need to continue to win games if we don’t want to play on Tuesday. We’d like to be in a situation where we don’t have to play Tuesday.”

The Bearcats beat the Hoyas (21-7, 10-6), who had won nine of their previous 10 games, with defense, playing more zone than they have all year, mixing it with occasional man-to-man looks and changing up their full-court pressure to limit the nation’s second-best shooting team to 25 percent shooting.

Cincinnati turned right around and lost at home to UConn 67-59 on Sunday, putting both the Bearcats and Huskies in a fi ve-way tie for seventh in the Big East at 9-7.

WRIGHT OUT UNTIL NCAA TOURNEY?Georgetown coach John Thompson III an-

nounced Thursday that senior point guard Chris Wright “underwent successful surgery this morning for a break in the third meta-

carpal of his left (non-shooting) hand…. Al-though we do not have an exact timetable, we expect to have Chris back before the end of the season.”

However, an anonymous source from the school told The Associated Press that George-town doesn’t expect Wright to return until the Hoyas’ fi rst NCAA Tournament game in mid-March. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the school did not want to publicly commit to a specifi c timetable.

While Wright’s college career apparently isn’t over, his injury represents a serious chal-lenge as the Hoyas wrap up their Big East schedule and prepare for the conference tour-nament. He is the team’s emotional leader and second-leading scorer, and his play is often a barometer of Georgetown’s success.

Wright was averaging 13.1 ppg and was leading the team with 5.4 assists and 1.5 steals per game. He was coming off a team-leading 26-point performance in a 61-55 victory at South Florida a week ago Saturday and had made the Big East honor roll the previous three weeks. He led the Hoyas with 24 points in a 62-59 victory over UofL on Jan. 31.

MARQUETTE ALSO MAKES A STATEMENTAnother school in need of a signature vic-

tory to bolster its NCAA Tournament resume was Marquette, which delivered by beating host No. 14 UConn 74-67 in overtime Thurs-day night.

When asked afterward what the victory meant for Marquette’s tournament chances, a hoarse coach Buzz Williams replied: “I had to pay my own way to attend junior college, then I went to a smaller school, and they didn’t of-fer a political science major. I don’t want to be a politician; I just want to coach these guys. But, you know, any win in this conference is a good win, especially on the road.”

Joe Lunardi, the guru of ESPN’s Bracketolo-gy, issued this statement immediately after thegame: “What Marquette just did, and Cincin-nati, with its victory at Georgetown Wednes-day night, could be history-making for the BigEast Conference. They are the 10th and 11thteams in the conference to make solid claimsto be in the NCAA Tournament.”

Marquette (17-11, 8-7) trailed UConn (20-7, 8-7) for much of the second half after theHuskies opened the half with a 20-4 run toerase a 34-23 halftime defi cit. The Huskies led59-57 with 31.5 seconds remaining when as-sociate head coach George Blaney, calling theshots in place of Hall of Fame coach Jim Cal-houn, who missed the game after the deathof his sister-in-law, called a timeout to set up aplay. Williams, meanwhile, instructed his teamnot to foul Huskies star Kemba Walker.

After trapping the junior guard near mid-court, Dwight Buycks picked Walker’s pocketat midcourt with 11.0 seconds left. He passedto Darius Johnson-Odom, whose driving bas-ket with 5.3 seconds remaining forced over-time.

Johnson-Odom then scored nine of the Golden Eagles’ 15 points in the extra periodas MU to some extent was able to exorcise thedemons of collapses at Vanderbilt, Louisvilleand Notre Dame.

“We defi nitely needed it,” said senior Jim-my Butler. “We needed a quality road win - aroad win, period.”

Johnson-Odom had 17 points to lead Mar-quette, which shot just 37.1 percent and wasoutrebounded 52-43, with the Huskies pullingdown 28 of those on the offensive end.

“I don’t know that there’s necessarily any way statistically you could explain how wewon,” said Williams. “Couldn’t make a shot,they got every 50-50 ball in the second half,

B I G E A S T R A C E E N T E R S I T S F I N A L W E E K

PROVIDENCE’S BROOKS TALLIES BIG EAST-RECORD 52Louisville junior Kyle Kuric leaped as he passed the ball to teammate Preston Knowles on the wing. Louisville is currently tied for third in the league. - photo by Shelley Feller


BASKETBALL PREVIEW VS. PITT2007 CARDINAL CARAVANBIG EAST NOTEBOOK

and they absolutely hammered us on the of-fensive glass.

“We had every reason, because of how good they were, to shut it down, (but) our guys hung in there.”

Walker led the Huskies with 27 points but made just 10 of 27 shots and was 0 for 4 with a turnover in the extra period.

After beating Providence last Sunday, Mar-quette is 18-11, 9-7 and in a fi ve-way tie for seventh place in the conference. The Golden Eagles will close the regular season with a home game against Cincinnati on Wednesday and a game at Seton Hall on Saturday.

RED STORM, HARDY THE REAL DEALSt. John’s already had proven it was danger-

ous at home, having beaten fi ve teams ranked among the top 13 in Madison Square Garden. Saturday it showed another dimension, win-ning 81-68 at No. 15 Villanova, its fi rst win over the Wildcats since 2003 and fi rst over a ranked team on the road since Jan. 17, 2002.

“Everyone was saying we could only win big games at the Garden,” said Dwight Har-dy. “We wanted to show we could win any-where.”

St. John’s (19-9, 11-5), which entered the rankings for the fi rst time since 2002 at No. 23 last week, has won six straight and eight of its last nine. The Red Storm and No. 5 Texas are the only teams to have beaten six ranked teams this season, and the win assures the Johnnies of at least a fi rst-round bye in the up-coming Big East Tournament. And with games left at Seton Hall and at home against South Florida, the Johnnies are virtually assured a double bye. To boot, the Big East Tournament IS in Madison Square Garden.

As the New York Post’s Lenn Robbins wrote, “It is no longer crazy to wonder, ‘Is St. John’s bound for Houston, home of the Final Four?’”

“We ain’t done yet,” said Hardy, who con-tinued his inspired play with a career-high 34 points against the Wildcats (21-8, 9-7), who have lost 4 of 6. The 6-2 senior made 9 of 16 shots, including 5 of 9 treys, and was 11 of 13 from the foul line. He also had seven assists and just one turnover.

“I really believe that he’s a runaway for the Big East Player of the Year and moving into the discussion as an All-American,” St. John’s coach Steve Lavin said. “Because if you’re the best player in the Big East, you’re in the discus-sion for fi rst team All-American.”

St. John’s hasn’t had a fi rst team All-Amer-ican since Walter Berry in 1986. Berry’s nick-name was “The Truth” and, the truth is, St. John’s is playing as well as any team in the country.

PLAYER OF YEAR ‘WIDE OPEN’Georgetown’s Austin Freeman was named

the Preseason Big East Player of the Year, but nearing the end of the season, he’s not even the favorite.

“I’d have to give it really strong thought be-cause Marshon Brooks probably is having the best year,” said UofL coach Rick Pitino. “He’s an outstanding player. He’s having the best year. But they’re not winning. If it’s value to a team, then it certainly brings into play (St. John’s’Dwight) Hardy and Kemba (Walker). There’s probably a few other guys like Freeman that you can throw in the mix as well. I’d have to give that some thought. Brooks certainly is the outstanding player. He’s a tremendous basketball player. Probably someone who, I think, will be a very good pro.”

Said Villanova coach Jay Wright: “It defi nite-ly is a more wide-open race than last year. Last year everyone had to choose between those two (Syracuse’s Wes Johnson and Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds)…. I think the strength of the Big East this year is that every team has a

great leader, but they’re not one-man teams. You can go through all the guys: Notre Dame, Georgetown. Pitt’s the best team, and you have to decide between the two guards (Ash-ton Gibbs and Brad Wanamaker). Both of them are equally as valuable. I have no clue right now. I do think a guy needs to be on a winning team. But a guy like Marshon Brooks is having such a fabulous year that he might overcome that. All the other teams are so bal-anced, and he is so extraordinary individually that he could overcome that issue.”

South Florida coach Stan Heath: “It defi -nitely is a wide-open race. The early on favor-ite was Kemba Walker for sure, and lately it’s really tightened up. (Syracuse’s) Rick Jackson is probably a guy who gets left out of the equa-tion. The more that name pops up the more you think, ‘That guy has been really consistent as well.’ … If you asked me two weeks ago I would have said Kemba Walker. Then I started looking at Ben Hansbrough, and Steve (Lavin) makes a valid point about Dwight Hardy. So I think I’m going to wait and see how these last couple weeks fi nish out and see who fi n-ishes strong down the stretch. I tend to lean towards the guy who can put his team in posi-tion to win the conference championship.”

Notre Dame’s Brey: “Rick Jackson is a guy whose name has come up in our staff meet-ings. A guy I talk about a lot because right now he’s got his team in position to win a reg-ular-season championship and he’s stirring the pot (is) Wanamaker. I don’t know if there’s a more respected player in this league. I’ve been in this league a long time. What that guy does for his team and the level of consistency and to have them in position to win. My criteria is a guy who really is helping a team to win the league at this point. I’ve always really felt it should come from somebody that’s really chas-ing (a title). Now we had a guy here before I coached, Pat Garrity, who certainly wasn’t on a winning team and was Player of the Year. But as far as for me and being in this game 25 years, I just have a lot of respect for a guy who’s pushing his team in the top tier and maybe winning the regular-season title.”

Rutgers’ Mike Rice: “I think it’s completely wide open. You didn’t mention anyone who’s in fi rst place in the Big East. Whether it’s Ash-ton (Gibbs) or Bradley Wanamaker, or whoever you have in there. It’s amazing what Marshon (Brooks) is doing. Hansbrough just continues to will his team, and Kemba’s scoring exploits and what he’s doing. Hardy has his team play-ing the best basketball in the Big East. I’m go-ing to … wait another week and a half to see how it ends up … because there are so many deserving individuals.”

UC’s Cronin: “I’m trying to get Rashad Bish-op publicity for Defensive Player of the Year, so there was my plug. I know Brad Wanamaker has had a heck of a year, but I believe Ashton Gibbs is the best player on Pittsburgh’s team, and that’s no disrespect to any of their other guys. I think other guys defi nitely merit con-sideration. If you look at scoring I think you go with Marshon Brooks or Kemba Walker. If you slate it toward production and winning in conference play I think you have to go towards Hansbrough and Ashton Gibbs.”

Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim: “Usually coaches generally lean to a player from the winning team. I don’t think it has to be. It’s just Play-er of the Year, so I think it could be open to anybody. As far as I can see, it’s pretty wide open…. There’s four or fi ve guys that have played well. Certainly Hansbrough, Walker and Hardy, Brooks, Rick Jackson, have been pretty good all year, Freeman. There’s been a bunch of different guys that have been good all year. It will be a pretty close call I think.”

Big East Basketball Standings

1. Pittsburgh 25-4 (13-3)Panthers at South Florida Thursday, host Villanova Saturday.

2. Notre Dame 23-5 (12-4)Irish hosted slumping Villanova Monday, at UConn Saturday.

t-3. Louisville 22-7 (11-5)Cards entertain Providence, Marshon Brooks Wednesday, at WVU Saturday.

t-3. St. John’s 19-9 (11-5)Surging Red Storm at Seton Hall Wednesday, host South Florida Saturday.

5. Syracuse 24-6 (11-6)Rejuvenated Orange host hapless DePaul Saturday.

6. Georgetown 21-8 (10-7)Stumbling Hoyas at Cincinnati Saturday, having lost to UC last Wednesday.

t-7. Cincinnati 22-7 (9-7)Bearcats at Marquette Wednesday, host Georgetown Saturday

t-7. Connecticut 21-7 (9-7)Huskies at WVU Wednesday, host Notre Dame Saturday.

t-7. Villanova 21-8 (9-7)Wildcats played at Notre Dame Monday, at Pittsburgh Saturday.

t-7. West Virginia 18-10 (9-7)Mountaineers host UConn Wednesday, UofL Saturday.

t-7. Marquette 18-11 (9-7)Rejuvenated Golden Eagles host Cincinnati Wednesday, at Seton Hall Saturday.

12. Seton Hall 11-17 (5-11)Pirates host St. John’s Thursday, South Florida Saturday.

13. Rutgers 13-15 (4-12)Knights at hapless DePaul Wednesday, at Providence Saturday.

t-14. Providence 14-15 (3-13)Friars at Louisville Wednesday, host Rutgers Saturday.

t-14. South Florida 9-20 (3-13)Bulls host Pittsburgh Wednesday, at St. John’s Saturday.

16. DePaul 7-21 (1-15)Blue Demons host Rutgers Wednesday, at Syracuse Saturday.


CARDINAL STARSMONIQUE REID - WOMEN’S BASKETBALLThe junior from Louisville Fern Creek High was Louisville’s leading scorer in wins over DePaul and Seton Hall last week. She had 28 points against the No. 7 Blue Demons and was unstoppable for parts of the game. “Monique Reid has owned DePaul,” Blue Demons coach Doug Bruno admitted. “We tried to guard her in a lot of different ways, but we had no answer for her.” Reid had 16 points against Seton Hall Saturday. She is averaging 16.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game this season and has hit a team-high 56 percent of her shots.

TORI COLLINS - SOFTBALLThe junior from Lafayette, Ind., posted her second consecutive shutout as UofL beat Wright State 8-0 in fi ve innings Saturday in the Red & Black Tournament. Collins also was the winning pitcher in Louisville’s 10-0 fi ve-inning romp over SIU-Edwardsville on Friday. She was an All-BIg East fi rst-team selection last season and posted an 18-6 record with a 2.24 ERA and 164 strikeouts.

KARSTEN CLEMENTS - MEN’S GOLF The senior from Elizabethtown, Ky., fi nished ninth with a three-round score of 4-over-par 219 (73-74-72) at the Mobile Bay (Ala.) Intercollegiate at the Magnolia Grove Golf Course last week. As a team, UofL placed 11th with a 25-over 893 (300-301-291). Justin Dorward tied for 28th. The Cardinals return to action in the USF Invitational in Tampa, Fla., Thursday through Saturday

AUSTEN CHILDS - MEN’S TENNISThe senior from Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, was named Big East Male Tennis Player of the Week following a dominating performance during the period ending on Feb. 22. “The old saying that the ‘cream rises to the top’ certainly fi ts the description of Austen’s performance at the national indoors,” UofL coach Rex Ecarma said. “He won at No. 1 singles and doubles at the marquee team event of the indoor season.” Childs led the No. 15 Cardinals at the ITA Team Indoor National Championships, going 2-1 in No. 1 singles action and 2-0 in No. 1 doubles play. Childs, No. 11 in the ITA singles rankings, downed No. 6 UCLA’s 63rd-ranked Daniel Kosakowski 6-3, 6-2 on Feb. 18, then beat No. 16 Georgia’s 24th-ranked Javier Garrapiz 7-6 (7-4), 6-0 before dropping a 3-6, 3-6 decision to fourth-ranked Steven Johnson of No. 2 Southern California. He is 18-7 on the season and 9-2 in dual matches.

BERGAN FOLEY - LACROSSEThe senior from Huntingdon Valley, Pa., helped Louisville beat Binghamton 18-4 on Feb. 20 in the season opener for both teams. The nation’s leading goal-scorer in 2010, Foley overcame a slow start to fi nish with six goals. After not getting her fi rst goal until the 16:15 mark, Foley tallied Nos. 2-4 in a span of 1:23. She tacked on her fi fth goal late in the fi rst period and added another in the second.

ASHLEY HERBST - LACROSSEThe freshman goalkeeper from Pittsford, N.Y., put together a strong performance after earning the starting nod between the poles in Louisville’s opening game against Binghamton. She registered 12 saves in 60 minutes of action and consistently made impressive saves on point-blank opportunities for the Bearcats. “There’s not a lot else we can ask for,” UofL coach Kellie Young said. “The goals that went in during the fi rst half were ones that our defense was letting in too close to her. I am so impressed with her performance today - her attitude, her clearing and her saves - and she had just an all-around great performance.” Herbst was a fi rst-team All-American as a high school senior and was a three-time team captain.

JULIA FELLERHOFF - WOMEN’S TENNISThe freshman from Deerfi eld, Ill., has been a star for Louisville so far this season. Saturday against Big East rival Rutgers, Fellerhoff helped the Cardinals eek out a 4-3 win. She won 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-3 over Amy Zhang at No. 1 singles, then teamed with Rebecca Shine to win the No. 1 doubles match. The Cardinals won the doubles point by winning all three matches and won singles matches at No. 1, No. 3 and No. 6. “Hey, it feels good to be on the right side of a 4-3 win,” coach Mark Beckham said. “And it feels good not just in terms of getting a win, but beating a good Rutgers team. This win is going to pay off by helping us get a better seed in the conference tournament, and it is all about matchups. I feel like the win positions us to be matched up much better in the conference tournament.”

REIDREID

COLLINSCOLLINS

CLEMENTSCLEMENTS

CHILDSCHILDS

FOLEYFOLEY

HERBSTHERBST

HOWIE LINDSEY’SHOWIE LINDSEY’S

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2007 CARDINAL CARAVANBIG EAST NOTEBOOKWOMEN’S BASKETBALL

By Howie LindseyWhen the University of Louisville beat

Seton Hall 59-49 last Saturday in the fi -nal home game of the regular season, the Cardinals kept alive the possibility of a No. 4 seed in the upcoming Big East Tourna-ment.

With a 10-5 league record, UofL was locked in a four-way tie for fourth place go-ing into Saturday’s games. After knocking off No. 7 DePaul (the league’s second-best team) Wednesday night and then beating the Pirates, the Cardinals now stand a very good chance to land the league’s No. 4 seed for the league tournament and the double bye that goes with it.

It’s a convoluted process, but coach Jeff Walz summarized the mess pretty well after Saturday’s game.

“We need UConn to beat Georgetown, and we need DePaul to beat Marquette,” he said. “And we need to beat Providence. If that happens, we’ll be in a tie for fourth, and no matter what we’ll get the seed.”

Walz’s outlook was this: Louisville en-tered Saturday tied with Marquette, Georgetown and Rutgers for fourth. If Lou-isville, UConn and DePaul win, Louisville could fi nish tied only with Rutgers, and UofL would win the head-to-head tiebreaker.

That’s a few ‘ifs’, but so far the ‘ifs’ are falling in Louisville’s favor. Later Saturday, No. 1 Connecticut beat No. 19 Georgetown 52-42, and No. 7 DePaul beat No. 22 Mar-quette.

That means that all the Cardinals have to do to secure the double bye was to beat Providence Monday night. Louisville (19-10, 10-5) is a signifi cantly better team than Providence (12-15, 5-10), but the Cardinals have been shaky on the road this season. (This week’s magazine was printed and mailed Monday, before the Providence game.)

If the double bye worked out in Louis-ville’s favor, Walz said it would help his team make a deeper post-season run.

“That would give us a nice break,” he said. “If we can get the win and the other things fall in place (as they already have), we can get Tuesday and Wednesday off and then we have Thursday, Friday and Saturday to prepare for a Sunday game.”

But who Louisville could play in that third round would be anybody’s guess. The league had two teams tied for second, four teams tied for fourth, two teams tied for eighth, two teams tied for 11th and three teams tied for 14th as of Saturday morn-ing.

“I think there are a few (teams) who would like to see us in their brackets be-cause they beat us by 20 or so,” Walz said with a smile before adding, “But I think we’re starting to play better. We’re not as consistent as I would like, but we’re getting there.”

If Louisville doesn’t beat Providence, they’d likely be the No. 6 seed, which would mean they’d get a fi rst-round bye in the league tournament. The Cardinals were picked to fi nish eighth in the league’s preseason coaches’ poll. They have outper-formed that prediction.

“I knew we had a chance to be good,” Walz said. “We were picked to fi nish eighth, and if everything works out we’ll fi nish fourth. I think we’ve played well at times. We’ve let some games go that I thought we had a chance to win, but that has a lot to do with the youth of the team. I’m just try-ing to make sure our kids understand how

hard you have to play every night. “LOUISVILLE IS DANGEROUSThe unranked Cardinals continued to

build their case as the most dangerous un-derdog in the nation Wednesday night with a 68-55 victory over No. 7 DePaul at the KFC Yum! Center. Louisville, which has now beat fi ve ranked teams, got 28 points from junior Monique Reid.

Louisville is the team nobody wants to see in its bracket at the Big East Tournament next week in Hartford, Conn.

“We have a lot of lethal weapons,” Reid said. “We’ve got a point guard (freshman Shoni Schimmel) that can do anything. She can make a behind-the-back pass, she can throw it full court, and she can hit anything as soon as she crosses half-court.”

On cue, Schimmel spoke up about some other offensive weapons on the team: “Mo’ goes out there and does her thing. She is a post, but she can go out and does some guard things, too. We have Keshia (Hines) and Sheronne (Vails) inside, and we have Becky (Burke) and Tia (Gibbs) shooting from the outside, so ev-erything overall makes us tough. Then we have Shelby (Harper), and she is always a factor. Everybody working together makes us 10 times better.”

While “dangerous” is a term used to de-scribe this Louisville team, inconsistent is, too.

“It’s one game at a time, and that’s been really our Achilles’ heel all year -- our con-sistency,” Walz said after the DePaul game. “I challenged them in the circle to go ahead and celebrate this, enjoy it, and then tomor-row when we get back to practice we have to be prepared.”

LOUISVILLE IS INCONSISTENTOne source of that inconsistency is Reid.

The Cardinals’ leading scorer can be fan-tastic at times but also can disappear for stretches.

“Mo’ is as good as there is when she wants to play,” Walz said. “I’ve told her that the entire time. The fi rst four minutes of the (DePaul) game, she did not play very well. She was very passive. She was worried about getting her shot blocked. She missed a wide-open layup to start the game. Then

fi nally she got aggressive and started to take the ball to the basket hard and wasn’t worried about getting a shot blocked. When she does that, we’ve got a chance to win basketball games. I was really proud of her. We have to have that from her every night in order to compete against top-10 teams.”

When Reid is on like she was against De-Paul, she’s tough to stop. She completely dominated for several possessions in a row.

“Monique Reid just owned the ball,” DePaul coach Doug Bruno said. “We tried to guard her in a lot of different ways. We have no answers for her.”

After Saturday’s victory over Seton Hall, Reid said she’d be rich if she had a penny for every time Coach Walz spoke to her about being more consistent.

“I think it is just having that motivation within ourselves,” she said. “We beat a lot of top teams, and the motivation is beating a top team. We have to stop playing down to the level of the competition. I’m not say-ing Seton Hall is a bad team, because ev-erybody in the Big East is a good team. It’s just that we need to be more consistent no matter who we are playing. No matter who we’re playing we have to play hard and fo-cus for 40 minutes.”

The root of Louisville’s inconsistency has been the large number of freshmen and fi rst-year players playing crucial minutes. The Cardinals made news in the off-season by landing a top-5 recruiting class, and those recruits have started a total of 68 games, mostly by Schimmel and Vanderbilt transfer Tia Gibbs.

“We’re not as consistent as I would like, but we’re getting there,” Walz said. “I’m trying to get the mentality of our players to really get a little bit on the tougher side. We need to be able to handle adversity when things don’t go well. We show a little bit too much frustration on our faces.”

CARDS TOP DEPAULLouisville handed DePaul its fi rst loss

since Feb. 5 at No. 1 Connecticut. Prior to Wednesday night’s game, the Blue Demons had won 12 of their last 13 games. For Lou-isville, Wednesday night’s win guaranteed a winning conference record.

UofL spotted the Blue Demons the fi rst eight points. UofL seemed to wake up at theunder-16 minute media timeout and beganto cut into DePaul’s lead immediately.

Despite better play, the Cardinals still trailed 12-5 at the 13:29 mark before go-ing on a 7-0 run sparked by Reid, whomade a pair of free throws to cut the marginto fi ve, then canned a jumper in the post tomake it a one-possession game.Schimmelthen made a three-pointer at 11:29 to tie it.

After a basket by DePaul, the Cards went on a 12-3 run to lead 24-17, and they wereup 26-20 at the break.

The Cardinals took their fi rst double-digit lead at 35-24 on a layup by Reid with justunder 17 minutes left. A pair of free throwsby Reid with 10:40 left put Louisville up 46-31, but the Blue Demons used a 10-2 runto close within 48-41 with just over nineminutes left.

A three by Schimmel stopped the 8-0 DePaul run with 7:30 to go and put Louis-ville back ahead by 10. DePaul got no closerthan eight points thereafter.

CARDS CLOBBER PIRATESLouisville’s fi nal home game was too

close for comfort in the fi rst half. SetonHall (8-20, 1-14), the last-place team inthe league, was within a possession ortwo for much of the fi rst half, which didn’tmake Walz happy.

“I wasn’t thrilled,” he said. “I thought we didn’t take care of the ball very well,and at one point in time we were 7 for 13from the fi eld and had eight turnovers.We shoot the ball well, but the problemis it’s hard to make shots when you throwthe ball to the other team.... I was tryingto encourage them, trying to get them tounderstand that if they want to be a greatbasketball team you have to show up everynight. You have to come out to play.”

The Cardinals cranked up the defensive pressure and blew the game open near theend of the fi rst half and into the second.UofL led just 25-21 with 1:34 remaining inthe fi rst half when the Cardinals got a three-point play from Reid to end the half. Theythen opened the second half by outscoringthe Pirates 28-13 in the fi rst 13:29. Up 56-34 at that point, UofL let its foot off the gaspedal and coasted to the 59-49 victory.

Reid led Louisville with 16 points. Hines had 12 points and 10 rebounds. Neitherplayed more than 24 minutes. Burke had10 points including a pair of threes in 26minutes.

NO SHONISchimmel, Louisville’s second-leading

scorer at 15.3 ppg, was held scoreless forthe fi rst time this season by Seton Hall.She went 0 for 5 and played just 17 min-utes. She had just one assist and four turn-overs.

“This is the fi rst time in Shoni’s career that she didn’t score,” Walz said. “Thegreat thing about it is when we’re up 22with six minutes to go and she hadn’tscored a point. You’re going to have gameslike that. If you’re going to pick a game tonot play your best, this was a good oneto pick because Keshia Hines played verywell, Asia Taylor played well and MoniqueReid played well. We had other players whostepped up, and that is what we have todo. One thing I was impressed with Shoniabout is that she didn’t force many shots.She was trying to get the ball to her team-mates. She understood, `Hey, they are do-ing a good job defending me, now I’ve gotto try to get my teammates involved.’”

Coach Jeff Walz presented senior Keshia Hines with a large framed print commemorating her career at Louisville. Hines was one of three seniors honored at Saturday’s fi nal home game at the KFC Yum! Center. The others were injured former players Laura Terry and LaToya Johnson. - photo by Shelley Feller

THE ‘IFS’ ARE IN LOUISVILLE’S FAVOR FOR BIG EAST TOURNEY


BIG EAST NOTEBOOK - FOOTBALL2007 CARDINAL CARAVAN10 AMAZING AND MEMORABLE MOMENTS OF THE 2009-2010 SEASONLOUISVILLE BASKETBALLWOMEN’S BASKETBALL

D

MAKE YOUR PICKSLAST WEEK:

LAST WEEK:_____OVERALL:_______

KENT TAYLORWAVE TV

LAST WEEK: 6-4OVERALL: 63-37

TERRY MEINERSWHAS RADIO


GARRY GUPTONRED AND BLUE REVIEW

ION CHANNEL 21LAST WEEK: 5-5OVERALL: 64-36

RUSS BROWNSPORTSREPORT


FRED COWGILLWLKY TV


TOM LANEWDRB FOX 41


MATT WILLINGERSPORTSREPORT


HOWIE LINDSEYSPORTSREPORT


DREW DEENERWHAS PLAY-BY-PLAY

WKRD RADIOLAST WEEK: 6-4OVERALL: 62-38

Each week members of our esteemed media panel will try to prove they are smarter than average. Longtime Louisville

SportsReport subscribers will remember that our media members used to test their basketball knowledge against a dog, but that proved to be far too challenging. The panel will

battle it out by trying to pick the winners of 10 games per week during the college basketball season to earn the honor of top

dog in the LSR’s Make Your Picks contest.

ZACH McCRITE93.9 THE TICKET


PROVIDENCE AT #16 LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE#14 CONNECTICUT AT WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA#11 GEORGETOWN AT CINCINNATI GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN#3 KANSAS AT #20 MISSOURI KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS#9 NOTRE DAME AT #14 CONNECTICUT NOTRE DAME UCONN UCONN#15 VILLANOVA AT #4 PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH#13 FLORIDA AT #18 VANDERBILT VANDERBILT VANDERBILT VANDERBILT#1 DUKE AT #19 NORTH CAROLINA DUKE NORTH CAROLINA DUKE#22 KENTUCKY AT TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE#16 LOUISVILLE AT WEST VIRGINIA LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE

JACK COFFEESPORTSREPORT


U OF L PRESIDENTJAMES RAMSEY


JEFF WAFFORDSPORTSREPORT


LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA UCONN UCONN WEST VIRGINIAGEORGETOWN CINCY GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN CINCY CINCY GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN

KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS MISSOURINOTRE DAME UCONN NOTRE DAME NOTRE DAME UCONN UCONN NOTRE DAME UCONN NOTRE DAME UCONNPITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH VANDERBILT FLORIDA VANDERBILT VANDERBILT FLORIDA VANDERBILT VANDERBILT VANDERBILT FLORIDA VANDERBILT

DUKE DUKE DUKE DUKE DUKE DUKE DUKE NORTH CAROLINA DUKE DUKETENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEELOUISVILLE WEST VIRGINIA LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE

DEB HARBSMEIERWHAS TV TEAM


AL PARRISHPARRISH HOUSE

80 UNDER 80LAST WEEK: 5-5OVERALL: 66-34

TONY CRUISEWHAS RADIO


LACHLAN MCLEANWHAS RADIO


DAVE JENNINGSWHAS RADIO


PAUL ROGERSWHAS RADIO TEAM


TONY VANETTIAFTERNOON UNDERDOGS

WKRD RADIOLAST WEEK: 6-4OVERALL: 61-39

LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA WEST VIRGINIA GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS KANSAS NOTRE DAME UCONN NOTRE DAME NOTRE DAME NOTRE DAME NOTRE DAME NOTRE DAME PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH FLORIDA VANDERBILT VANDERBILT VANDERBILT VANDERBILT VANDERBILT VANDERBILT DUKE NORTH CAROLINA DUKE DUKE DUKE DUKE DUKE KENTUCKY TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE TENNESSEE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE

SENIOR HONORS

Sophomore Asia Taylor had one of her best games Saturday Sophomore Asia Taylor had one of her best games Saturday against Seton Hall. She scored just nine points, but was active against Seton Hall. She scored just nine points, but was active on defense and in transition. - photo by Shelley Felleron defense and in transition. - photo by Shelley Feller

ASIA’S BALL

Louisville seniors Keshia Hines, Laura Terry and LaToya Johnson Louisville seniors Keshia Hines, Laura Terry and LaToya Johnson posed with women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz on Senior Day posed with women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz on Senior Day Sunday. - photo by Shelley FellerSunday. - photo by Shelley Feller

FEBRUARY 3, 2011 LOUISVILLE SPORTSREPORT PAGE 27

2007 CARDINAL CARAVAN

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CARDINAL FOOTBALL

The University of Louisville released its 2011

football schedule last Friday, and it includes

eight opponents who made bowl appearances

in 2010 and features a Thursday night season

opener at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.

The Cardinals will be on national television at

least four times, starting with the season opener

against Murray State on Sept. 1. The game will

be on ESPNU. Three Friday night games also will

be televised. UofL was on national TV just twice

during the regular season last year.

“The schedule will certainly be very challeng-

ing,” UofL coach Charlie Strong said. “...I’m ex-

cited to have four games already scheduled on

one of the ESPN networks, which increases the

visibility of our program as we continue to build

upon it.”

UofL will get another nationally televised

game on ESPN on Friday, Sept. 9, when Sun Belt

Conference foe Florida International invades

Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. This will be the

fi rst meeting between the schools.

The Cardinals then will hit the road for the

fi rst time in 2011 when they travel down I-64

to face archrival Kentucky at Commonwealth

Stadium on Sept. 17. The Wildcats have won

the last four meetings in the series and own a

14-9 advantage.

After an open week on Sept. 24, the Car-

dinals will host Marshall on Saturday, Oct. 1,

then travel to Chapel Hill to face North Carolina

on Oct. 8. It will be the fi rst meeting between

the schools since 2005, when the Cardinals

clobbered the Tar Heels 69-14 at Papa John’s

Cardinal Stadium.

The Cardinals will open their seventh season

in the Big East on Oct. 15 when they make the

short trek to Cincinnati to face the Bearcats at

Paul Brown Stadium. UC beat UofL 35-27 last

season at PJCS. The Cards then will have a short

week for their Big East home opener with a Fri-

day night game on ESPN against Rutgers on

Oct. 21. Louisville defeated the Scarlet Knights

40-13 last season.

“I expect the Big East to be extremely com-

petitive and balanced, a lot like that season,”

Strong said. “Every team is capable of compet-

ing for the conference championship.”

Louisville will play two of its next three

league games at home, starting with an Oct.

29 game vs. Syracuse and a visit from Pitts-

burgh on Nov. 12. A trip to Morgantown, W.

Va., comes in between those two home con-

tests when the Cardinals play West Virginia on

Nov. 5. The Cardinals defeated Syracuse in the

Carrier Dome 28-20 last season and dropped

games at Pittsburgh (20-3) and to West Virginia

(17-10) in PJCS.

The Cardinals will close the regular season

with a pair of road games, traveling to Con-

necticut on Nov. 19 and closing the 2011

season on Friday, Nov. 25, at South Florida on

ESPN, although the telecast could be moved

to ABC or ESPN2. Louisville shut out league

champ Connecticut 26-0 last season and

dropped a 24-21 overtime decision at home

to South Florida.

“I’m very appreciative to ESPN for helping us

work through some of the obstacles that we

had in completing our schedule,” said UofL ath-

letic director Tom Jurich. “I’m very excited with

the number of games we have on television.”

UofL will have six home games and six

away games. The Cards were 7-6 last season,

Strong’s fi rst at the helm, capped by a 31-28

victory over Southern Mississippi in the Beef ‘O’

Brady’s Bowl. It was UofL’s fi rst winning season

in four years.

DATE OPPONENT / EVENT LOCATION TIME / RESULT

Thu., Sept. 1 Murray State (ESPNU) Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, Louisville, Ky TBA

Fri., Sept. 9 Florida International (ESPN) Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, Louisville, Ky 7 P.M.

Sat., Sept. 17 at Kentucky Commonwealth Stadium, Lexington, Ky TBA

Sat., Oct. 1 Marshall Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, Louisville, Ky TBA

Sat., Oct. 8 at North Carolina Kenan Memorial Stadium, Chapel Hill, NC TBA

Sat., Oct. 15 at Cincinnati Paul Brown Stadium, Cincinnati, Ohio TBA

Fri., Oct. 21 Rutgers (ESPN) Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, Louisville, Ky 8 P.M.

Sat., Oct. 29 Syracuse Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, Louisville, Ky TBA

Sat., Nov. 5 at West Virginia Mountaineer Field, Morgantown, WV TBA

Sat., Nov. 12 Pittsburgh Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, Louisville, Ky TBA

Sat., Nov. 19 at Connecticut Rentschler Field, East Hartford, Conn TBA

Fri., Nov. 25 at USF (ABC/ESPN/ESPN2) Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, Fla TBA

2011 CARDINAL FOOTBALL SCHEDULE2011 CARDINAL FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

CARDS WILL BE ON NATIONAL TV AT LEAST FOUR TIMES IN 2011

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