By Mark Bacon
See photo above. See Trey drive to the basket. See Trey fail to recognize the double team. Until it’s too late. Didn’t we see this against VA Tech the other night? See the Cards engage in an exercise of total futility. Total humiliation.
UVA thrashed the Cards, sending them to their worst defeat in Yum! Center history. The ‘Hoos’ thorough 63-47 rout of the 16th-ranked Cards was the perfect illustration of what is so wrong with this team.
- U of L wore special adidas “White Ice” uniforms for this game. Oh, it worked; they went ice cold; shooting only 32.7 percent. Meanwhile Virginia ripped the Cards’ defense for 57.8 percent. The last seven minutes of the game? The Cavaliers missed only one shot. After making two of its first four shots, the Cards made just one shot over the next 11 minutes — and still was down only 12 points. Dear adidas, can we stop this special or limited edition uniform BS? Michigan State looked like clowns earlier in the week.
- “Tonight, we got discouraged by a much better basketball team,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said after the game. “We are just going to try to get better and better, make the tournament, and see what happens come March. There is no reason to get down in the dumps because we are 6-2 (ACC) and 17-4 (overall). Now that can turn around in a hurry, so each win is going to be monumental for us — we have got to get one game at a time and put all our effort in that one victory.”
- Virginia sent Wake Forest to the free throw line 29 times Tuesday. Louisville sent Virginia Tech to the line 38 Wednesday night. Yesterday, nobody got to the bonus in the first half. Ball-screen hedges with contact, fouls in most games this season, weren’t yesterday. Louisville Coach Rick Pitino complained that refs need to recognize offensive players driving into defenders. They shouldn’t get foul calls. Russ Smith used to always get that call. Siva and Rozier, too. Damion Lee can’t get it. Russ, Peyton or Terry ain’t walking through that door anytime.
- The Cards have to adjust to how each game is called, and UVA did a much better job of that than Louisville yesterday. Lee became preoccupied with the officiating, and was taken out of his game all day, looking at the refs as much as he looked for team mates.
- I’m not sure how this Louisville team will react to dealing with quicker teams — like North Carolina will be when it visits on Monday night.
- The press isn’t as effective as it has been in years past. The ball pressure is lacking. Our inexperience on the interior has lead to some pretty glaring layups and dunks. It did in the second half Saturday; UVA had four layups and four dunks.
- In the first half — a near carbon-copy of last year’s Virginia game in Charlottesville — Louisville’s guards over-penetrated, looking to score around the basket, and turned the ball over or missed heavily contested shots. In the second half Saturday, they stopped, and the Cards wound up with seven layups or dunks for the half.
- One bright spot: Deng Adel came in and contributed, his best game for the Cardinals. He made a pair of three-pointers. He scored a career-high 12 points. He grabbed five rebounds. In the 21 minutes he played, Louisville was only minus-1.
- “If you look for a silver lining . . . that was the only silver lining,” Pitino said.
The ONLY silver lining is correct. With number 1 or 2 North Carolina coming to town Monday night, the future doesn’t look too bright.
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