Louisville Cardinals Season Wrap

Sorry sports fans, Coach Onski has been away for a while. He got a new job which is making him work (shocking I know) so these pages have been the first to take a back seat as they dont pay the bills.

But lets get into things with a wrap as to what has been happening in the world of College Basketball. With special emphasis on the Big East and the Louisville Cardinals. Last time we heard from me there were 3 matches left in the regular season against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, the Wildcats of Villanova and the top of the table clash agains the Hoyas of Georgetown.

The match against Luke Harangody and Notre Dame was a doozie. Although with the Cardinals leading all match and being up by 19 at some stages the Irish fought back led by Harangody and his 40 point and 12 rebound performance. But their fightback was not enough as the Cards snuck home by 5 points, 90-85. David Padgett was key to the Louisville win with 26 points of his own as he dominated the offensive paint on 10-14 shooting. WIth 4 toher playres helping out in double figures it was a great all round performance by the team.

Next up was the Nova boys, where the Cardinals wanted to get the win to face Georgetown for the Big East title match. ANd a win they got with a convincing 14 point thumping of Villanova, 68-54. After the 12th minute the game never looked in doubt with Louisville getting a spurt that porpelled them to the nice win. There were no major standouts in this game with a nice team effort, although Juan Palacios in his last game at Freedom Hall was good in his first even game for Louisville in front of his mother, who made the trip from Coloumbia. He dropped in 13 points including 2 triples to lead the team in scoring.

That win pitted the Cardinals against the Hoyas. The winner claimed bragging rights and the Big East title. The game was close throughout but it seemed that Georgetown had the upper hand throughout the contest leading by as many as 11 early in the 2nd half. But the Cardinals are a team that wont give up and they put on a chase to grab the lead with 3.30 left in the game. But it was not enough to grab with win with DaJuan Summers dropping a 3 in the final minute to seal a 55-52 W for the Hoya's. It was a tough game with defense being the major focus for both teams.

"It was a grind 'em basketball game," Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. "We put ourselves in a situation where we could win. It just takes one blunder for you to lose the game in that situation. It was a great game. There were no easy shots. It was a lot of aggressive play out there by both teams."

The Loss for the Cardinals left them with a 14-4 conference record for the season where they finished 3rd behind Georgetown (15-3) and Notre Dame (14-4). They also wrapped up the regular season managing #13 in the rankings which was a stellar effort considering the injuries early and the average start to their season.

Coach Onski would like to add a personal note that he is extremely proud of his Louisville Cardinals efforts this season. Yes the season is not over but if the passion to date and the stifling defense has been second to none. Well done fella's.

Coach Onski

Pictures thanks to www.viewimages.com

Louisville still climbing

THe little birdies of Louisville are flying high. The Louisville Cardinals came away with a 2 point win against Pittsburgh on Sunday (24/2) and that has given them a 12-3 conference record with 3 games remaining. That record ties them in first place with Georgetown in the Big East.

That is not all, the team from Ville have managed to climb the national rankings once again. Hitting 13th in the Assocated Press rankings and #18 in the coaches rankings. It has been one of the greatest fightbacks in NCAA history having won their last 7 matches. They were deemed down at out early into the season with a number of key injuries but with the team fit and healthy now they sky is the limit to where they can end up.

David Padgett has been the man to push Louisville to the next level. Padgett has always been a bit of an injury magnet and this season has been no different. But he came back from some serious knee problems and has been in career form of late. His knee problem was reported as being an 11 week injury, but Padgett in his final year at Louisville wasnt having any part of that, he was back after about 7 weeks.

The fight continues though with the final 3 matches against some powerful opponents of the Big East. First up with the true fighters, those of the Irish variety. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish (11-3) are coming to town with a hope to shrink that half game gap between the two teams on the table. Luke Harangody is taking all before him this season. The Sophomore forward is averaging a double double with 20 points and 10 rebounds, Including a season high 32 points and 16 rebounds just 2 weeks back in the loss to UConn.

Ville then faces the 7-7 Villa who are a team that can match it with anyone on their day. Villanova Wildcats are on a roll of their own by winning 4 of their last 5 and the loss in that streak coming against conference leading Georgetown by only 2 points.

The final game of the Louisville regular season is a battle for the top place, they head to Georgetown. Louisville will be hoping to prove their 59-51 win back on the 9/2 wasnt a fluke. On that day the Georgetown leader Roy Hibbert wasnt on his full game and will be hoping to bounce back this time. In his last two games he has been a defensive dynamo with 18 points, 8 rebounds 2 steals and SIX blocks against Providence and 12 points FIVE blocks against Cincinatti. He is a 7-2 senior that will push Padgett to his limit.

This game will decide the final ranking fate of Louisville, I for one hope they can get up and have a top 10 ranking by the end of the year. Fingers crossed.

Coach Onski

Pictures thanks to www.allposters.com and www.espn.com

Louisville 88 def DePaul 68

I asked for Drealon Burns of the DePaul Blue Devils to have an average night against Louisville in today's US College game in Illinois, guess what? He did. Or was it that the Cardinals had a supreme night.

Louisville started the game in style with an 8-0 run and never looked back for an 88-68 win. For the second game in a row David Padgett came up big for the Cards. On 9-12 shooting he scored 20 points, 4 rebounds and 2 blocks. Terrance Williams though was the standout for the now 9-3 Louisville side. He too managed 9-12 shooting for his 22 points which included 2 three's. He also had 8 rebounds and 5 assists to give him a nice stat line to finish the game.

Dar Tucker was DePaul's best with 22 points off the bench but it was their terrible shooting that probably cost them the match. Drealon was terrible from the arc with all of his 5 shots missing, and shooting a miserable 3-14 for the game to end up with 11 points. The entire team only had 36.5% compared with Louisville's 58.1% from the field.

In the end the scoreline of flattered the Blue Devils. The Cards were up by as much as 31 in the 2nd half and were cruising. The pedal was taken off near the end but it was too late for DePaul to claw back such a deficit.

Louisville now head to the struggling Providence's (4-8) home to hopefully decrease the gap between themselves and the Georgetown Hoya's on top of the Big East. Both Louisville and Notre Dame are 1 game behind the Hoya's and can sniff the top of the table.

Coach Onski

Louisville in the top 25 (sort of)

Well as mentioned yesterday, I expected Louisville to jump into the national rankings and that they did....just.

Louisville was the only newcomer to the top 25 this week at the expense of the rapidly dropping Marquette. As part of the Associated Press 25 Louisville jumped in at 23 with a total of 246 points. Their Big East rival Marquette dropped a massive 10 spots from 16th to an unofficial 26th.

In the ESPN/USA Poll the Cardinals are just out of the Top 25 sitting at the unofficial 26th, just 5 points behind Marquette.

It is still a long way to go for the Cardinals to climb the rankings. Memphis is leading the way with a total of 72 or a possible 72 first place votes to sit atop the AP Rankings with 1800 points. It is there I think they will stay unless they lose a game in the end stretch of the season, which I doubt.

Louisville have 7 games left in the regular season and that leaves them with a chance of going 15-3 for the year. Surely this will grant them a top 10 ranking. Unfortunately in those games they face Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and Georgetown who are all going well this year.

With this still in mind I am excited about the chances of the Cardinals as they seem to enjoy the challenges of playing quality sides, and so far this season they have done well in those games.

Stay tuned for the 12th Feb game against DePaul, hopefully we can keep their scoring machine Draelon Burns down and come away with the Win.

Coach Onski

On a side note lets take a look back at DePauls scoring machine Draelon Burns. Back on November 28th this year the Blue Demons faced the Texas A&M-CC Islanders. True the Islanders are not quite the top of the quality tree but they put up a good fight against DePaul until 9 minutes remaining in the game. In this game Burns was on fire. He led the team with 32 points, on 11-13 shooting. But this also included an amazing 8-8 from beyond the arc, what a game, what shooting. DePaul ended up winning 85-70 but as mentioned the game was much closer until the final 9 minutes. Lets hope that the defence of Louisville can stop this kind of 3 point dominance from Burns tomorrow.

Images courtesy of www.viewimages.com

Louisville Beats Georgetown (6)

I have been talking up the Aussies in the US College system of late, but none of them play for the team I supoort. The boys I follow are the mighty Loiusville Cardinals. Do I know why? Not really, I think I saw a player do a monster dunk back in the 90's and it was such a good dunk I thought that would be a good enough reason as any to support them.

Anyway over the weekend bought Louisvilles biggest test of the season. Facing the Big East leaders in the Georgetown Hoyas (9 wins - 1 loss). Having only lost 1 conference game all season and won the past 6 in a row the Hoyas were looking to run away with the conference. They were ranked 6th in the country, whereas Louisville (7 wins - 3 losses) were not ranked at all (Seriously dont know how but that is another story).

This game was being shown on ESPN's prime time so Louisville called for a 'White Out' Night which they got all the crowd wearing white. Even the Cardinals coach Rick Pitino donned a pure white suit. Hey definately looked the part being in Kentucky and all the KFC bosses could have linked him to Colonel Sanders.As the game started it was close for the beginning as the teams started to warm up, but as the quarter progressed Georgetown started to stamp their dominance. Stretching their lead to 8 points at the half with the scoreline being 31-23.

Half time Pitino musnt have been a happy man. He came back after the break in his tradional black suit and this change must have flipped a switch in the Louisville game as well. After about 1 minutes gone in the quarter Louisville revved the accellerator and took control. They sparked a turnaround and with a 3 pointer 6 minutes into the half Lousiville had the lead and never looked back. They then ran away with the match and outscored the Hoyas 20-36, to win the game 59-51.

It was a great effort from the Cardinals who now should crack a national ranking. Finally we got to see the David Padgett we have been waiting for. He was the key to the Cardinals win with 18 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists. I have been waiting for Padgett to be the big man we know he can be and I think this game may have been the turnaround. Now dont get me wrong, I think he is a quality player, it is just he has been hampered with injuries throughout his college career and he just needs to get the games on the board to convince the country he is the player he can be.

Jerry Smith also managed to knock down 4 of 5 three's in his 16 points and was the only other Cardinal in double figures. it was definately not a big scoring event, the Hoyas best was their big man Roy Hibbert and guard Austin Freeman who both ended up with 14 points.

This game brings Louisville within 1 game of top spot in the east. Georgetown is still on top with Notre Dame behind them by half a game. Louisville next play DePaul (5-6) on the 12/2 in which they must keep the momentum going for thier push up the NCAA rankings.

Coach Onski.

As an endnote Pinito told ESPN he changed his suit at halftime as he had spilt Diet Coke on it. Other sources state that he was sweating so much in the Linen that his blue jocks were soon to be seen so he felt he had to change. No matter why he did it, the Hoyas were the ones that cooled down in the second half.

Rick Pitino Photo courtesy of Joe Robbins/US Presswire & www.espn.com, David Padgett picture courtesy of www.scout.com, Cardinal picture courtesy of www.allposters.com