Hell in the Hall – Louisville Sports Blog

“We’re a cutting, slashing team, but we were playing like a bunch of guys from South Dakota who are great shooters. Thabeet intimidated us.” Rick Pitino

“Thabeet’s presence was overwhelming. Samardo Samuels, we recruited him like crazy, terrific player, but I don’t think he enjoyed the evening because of Hasheem.” UConn coach Jim Calhoun

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The magical, starry-eyed optimism of January was firehosed by some icy reality last night.

Yeah, we’re good.  But we’re not that good.

At least we didn’t display it against a Husky team, that simply controlled the game virtually from the beginning.

We can get into detailed analysis, but we don’t need to.  The game can be summarized very neatly:

• Intimidation by Thabeet
• Lack of ball movement by the Cards

The former soon dictated the latter.  When your bigs (particularly Samardo) just give up entirely on O inside, then you become a one-dimensional team of jump shooters.

And we are too erratic on our outside shooting for that to ever work for us against top 10 opponents.

Now,  I know a little about playing center against taller guys:  I was  a slow, short (6’3″  ), and vertically-challenged center.

But  few centers ever  scored or rebounded more than me in a game.

There are two ways to control a shot blocker: 1) take the ball at him strong and draw fouls or 2) Pull him away from the basket by bringing your center out to the high post.

We did neither.

Our  only big who really slashed to the basket, challenging Thabeet,  was T Will.  Samardo was frankly embarrassingly intimidated.  He set the tone early when he got the ball low a few times, but refused to body-up and blast into Thabeet to try to draw the foul.  Yeah, you’ll get blocked a lot–but you will put heat on Thabeet and possibly get him in  foul trouble.  Which in my mind is the best way to beat UConn.

So you don’t want to take it directly at the big man? Samuels has a nice 10-15′ jump shot.  Why didn’t we post him–or George Goode who can also shoot– at the free throw line like Georgetown did with Greg Monroe, when they took down UConn?

With our inside game non-existent,  ball movement–and player movement– became non-productive and slowed down.  And, with Thabeet allowed to just camp under the basket, UConn was able to put pressure on our jump shooters.

And you know how that always works out for us:  It doesn’t.

We –or any team– will not ordinarily shoot well when their shots are challenged.  And we didn’t–hitting a poor 34% in each half.

The final nail in us:  When we have no inside game, ball movement,  or outside shooting, then we break down in one-on-one drives–usually by Earl.  And, indeed, Earl delivered on that one, going 2 for 13 in the first half alone.  That opened the eyes of a few of the 31 pro scouts there–or closed them.

Many of those misses came on painfully clumsy drives to the basket that frankly UConn wanted:  Calhoun stated that part of their game plan was to make Earl put the ball on the floor.  Anyone with eyes knows anything can happen when he does that–and most of those things are bad.

In analyzing this game, one could point to a possible key strategic error when the game may well have been decided:  The last six minutes of the first half.

During this time,  the two most productive Card players in the game –T Will and Preston– warmed the bench.  And the lead skied from a couple of pts to the 12 pt bulge at the half. We never got closer than 10 down , the rest of the game.

Now, T Will had two fouls on him–but he got those two on him  in the first four minutes of the game, and still stayed in the game.  Preston–???

Don’t understand the Pitino thinking there…

You could point to the ridiculous disparity in the foul shooting– we got only two foul shots the whole game!   Meanwhile UConn got 24–and made 20.  This 18 pt differential was equal to  the margin of the game.

But… questionable refereeing aside, our lack of free throws in the most part hearkened back again to our lack of ball movement or challenge to Thabeet or the UConn interior.   You don’t get many foul calls  on a bunch of jump shots.

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As discouraging as this game was–and it was downright painful to watch– the silver lining is still shining from that magical January run.  Considered almost dead, the Cards instead surged from nowhere to #5.

Yeah, we took a hard body shot last night from a legit team with Final Four talent.

But a loss in this Murderer’s row of the last 10 opponents was hardly unexpected.  In fact, c’mon:  Could ANYONE have predicted that run in January?

So,  we’re not the #1 team –yet–by a long-shot.  But we’ve proven we’re a legit top 10 team with  a ton of upside.

Do you really need any more to make you smile again?

GO CARDS!