“We’re at the halfway point and we’ve been through World War I, II, III, IV, and V.”
Rick Pitino, never at a loss for some quotable hyperbole.
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Mark it down: Nine straight and a perfect January.
Started with shutting up UK, and finished with dunking new arch-rival WVU and their sourpuss/crybaby of a coach I / we’ve hated on at least some level for almost 20 years.
T Will threw down some nice bombs, and blew the Eers back to Morgantown.
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And now, a true rarity: A shot at bagging a second # 1 team within a season, as UCONN struts into the Hall on Monday, on its very own streak.
God, what a season. I can remember no other regular season in my 40+ yrs with this sustained high level of competition–much less the frenzy of the Hall sparked by our win streak against this Murderer’s Row, and sprinkled with numerous mind-blowing highlight reels from individual Card players.
It’s been a helluva fun ride so far….
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The WVU game was decided in an otherworldly 40 -15 explosion of Jerry Smith 3′s and Terrence Jennings dunks in the last twelves minutes of the first half that ballooned a close game into a halftime lead of 20 pts.
It was breath-taking.
As you can imagine , there was joy in Mudville. The Hall was rocking, and people buzzed with a blowaway, in a game expected to be a low scoring, semi-mugging match.
U of L had shot 59% from 2 and 50% from 3–with a rejuvenated Jerry canning 4 of 5 treys. We had also manhandled rough-tough WVU 18-14 on the boards, and microwaved them into 14 TO’s. The rout was on ! (So we thought…)
However, down 20 at the half, WVU nearly brought our carnival ride to an abrupt halt. In the final half, Huggins team fired the intensity we had originally expected. The mugging began in earnest–to their credit they played very tight, tough, in-your-jock D on us. And we let them force us out of our offense–any offense.
In the second half, the Cards got complacent-- and then nervous-- as the lead dwindled. Frankly, I chose this pic because it shows a great shot of the Bob Huggins we all know and hate--with that full open-mouthed growl and those pleading out-stretched arms.
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Visions of the wood soldiers from the WKU games… lots of standing around, no fighting thru the D. Very disappointing to see after that first half quite frankly.
WVU totally flip-flopped the game and momentum on us. They out-rebounded us in the last half 18-12, and turned us over 12 times to their….2. We had a season-high 26 turnovers! T Will had 7, Jerry and Andre 5, and Earl 4. It reeked of complacency and laziness in the second half….
Yes, you are correct: This is a gratuitous LadyBird shot. (Photo courtesy of Sam4gtr at Card chronicle.)
The lead painfully dripped away, and wailings could be heard from the Card faithful as it shrank finally to 4 with still two minutes to play.
However, Samardo drew a foul and again showed that he can put down the big FT’s when they count. And T Will slammed one a minute later to seal the deal.
The true , stand-out points of this game, besides the W: Jerry broke out with a monster game: 7 of 8, including 4 of 5 3-balls, and a team-leading 20 pts PLUS 6 boards. For shooters like Jerry, confidence is huge, and we need his shooting come Dancing time in March. (But…he had only 4 pts in the second half–man, ya got to fight thru that face-fronting D…)
But the biggest surprise was Terrence Jennings who absolutely dominated 7 minutes in the first half. He dunked three times, hit a nifty reverse layup–yes , a spin move, and a reverse-f-ing layup– and made a couple of free throws (he’s 32% for the yr!). The Hall crowd was properly dumbstruck, but ecstatic.
TJ dominated for 7 awesome minutes. (Photo courtesy of Sam4gtr at Card Chronicle.)
The second half…It wasn’t pretty…but bottom- line we got it done at crunch time, when frankly we didn’t, in earlier games we lost.
Pitino: “We fall in love with ourselves too much. In the long run, it’s probably better we had a war down the stretch.”
Next up: UConn, probably to be crowned the new # 1 team in the land just before tip-off in Freedom Hall.
Hang on, we’re taking off again…
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….. to his streaking wing man on the break, Earl Clark, for the hard jam thru the foul, for the plus one. (Photos courtesy AP/ESPN). 
