Pitt lost its last 2 games. 3 of its last 4. Two of the losses came on the road, and all three losses to likely tourney teams. Pitt is struggling.
Louisville has not won 2 straight games since the beginning of January (Providence and UC-Davis). They have been 4-5 since the end of January. All of their losses on the road, all of their wins at home. In that stretch the only win over a tournament team was against Marquette. They are considered to be improving.
The numbers are different. Pitt is a 4 1/2 point favorite. Based on mathematical calculations, Pitt has the best chance of any BE team to win today. Neither team played a neutral site game this season. Pitt is 16-1 at home and 5-5 on the road. Louisville is 16-3 at home and 2-8 on the road. Both teams lost in MSG to St. John’s in the same week.
Right now, I have no sense as to how this game will go. I don’t think anyone is really sure on either side.
There’s a lot of talk about the confidence of Louisville right now.
They say they’re playing their best basketball of the season right now and it would be a mistake to underestimate or overlook them. In their last two games, they took both West Virginia and UConn down to the wire in four-point losses.
“Everybody from the end of the bench to the front of the bench has confidence now and we’re playing a different style of basketball,” guard Taquan Dean said following U of L’s Tuesday afternoon workout at Gaucho’s Gym in the heart of the Bronx near Yankee Stadium. “I think a lot of Big East teams now are coming to realize these guys have to be reckoned with, and if we keep playing the same way we’ve been playing, we’ve got a good shot at it.
“I know other teams are watching and they have to be a little nervous because we’re playing good basketball right now. We know we can play with the best of them and we’re going in there to win it. We’re getting there (improving) because everybody is coming around.”
Which should seem vaguely familiar for Pitt fans since the same sort of talk surrounded Pitt coming off of their 4-point road loss to UConn. How Pitt was playing good ball, and what a good sign it was to take the #1 team to the wire. Yada, yada, yada.
Part of that changed perception for Louisville is also the change in personnel because of injuries and recovered health from earlier in the Big East Conference play.
Way back then – when Louisville, a Final Four team last season, was ranked No. 10 and Pitt was at a season-high at No. 12 – the Cardinals were playing with a hobbled Taquan Dean, a slow-to-recover Juan Palacios and a slow-to-acclimate David Padgett.
They were overrated by talented, yet unhealthy and lacking confidence. Dean played only 12 minutes and Palacios had only eight points. Pitt won 61-57, a mild upset that allowed the Panthers to jump three more spots in The Associated Press poll.
That was so two months ago.
Now, Dean and Palacios are healthy and the Cardinals are playing well. Palacios had 29 points in the regular-season finale at No. 1 Connecticut. The Cardinals beat Marquette, the Big East’s fourth seed, three days before that. They’ve recovered from a morbid midseason stretch in which they lost five of six games, and Dean recovered from his injury and was an all Big East second-team pick.
“They’ve had a good turnaround,” said Pitt guard Levon Kendall. “They are playing with new confidence.”
But all is not wonderful for Louisville and coach Rick Pitino. Padgett, the Cardinals’ second-leading scorer and only inside presence, won’t make the trip to New York after having season-ending knee surgery Monday on his knee that he injured in the Connecticut game.
The loss of Padgett transformed Louisville (18-11, 6-10) into a guard-oriented, outside-shooting team.
Yes, they are playing a different style with different people, but certain things remain.
It has changed the complexion of Louisville’s team, Gray said.
“Maybe a little bit,” the 7-foot center said, responding to a suggestion that Pitt could have an edge in the paint. “(But) it changes about every game. Teams do a good job of focusing down low sometimes and that opens up our perimeter guys. We’ll see as the game progresses.”
Pitino knows Pitt is likely to present as tough a challenge today, despite having struggled down the stretch in the regular season.
“They’ve been a top-10 team for most of the season, and they’ve been very deserving of that ranking,” Pitino told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “They’ve been very consistent, have great experience and have one of the premier big men in the country (Gray).”
Louisville will press. They will play a tough defense, they won’t have a strong defensive presence inside.
Pitt will have to play tough perimeter defense against the 3. Pitt will need to make foul shots and be aggressive going to the basket.
The easy thing is to say that certain players need to have big games.
Colombia native Juan Tello Palacios has arrived just in time to give U of L hope. After struggling all season while playing his way back from a severe ankle injury, the 6-foot-8 Palacios is “really blossoming,” in the words of Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun.
Palacios poured in a career-high 29 points in Saturday’s 84-80 loss to Calhoun’s team. He has had high-scoring games before, but never of the type that he showed in Storrs. He was 3 of 6 from three-point range, made 5 of 10 midrange shots in traffic and, perhaps most important, got to the free-throw line 10 times and made all of them. The final two tied it with with 54.6 seconds to play.
“He’s not just playing the best he has played all season, but he’s at an all-time high,” U of L senior guard Taquan Dean said.
For either team.
Pitt coach Jamie Dixon can recite a laundry list of things that have contributed to the downfall of the Panthers in their losses this season. Sometimes, it was poor defense. Sometimes, it was turnovers. Other times, it was missed free throws. Many times, it was a combination of those things.
Invariably, there was one other constant in Pitt’s losses: Carl Krauser.
When Krauser, Pitt’s senior guard and leading scorer, had an off game the results usually weren’t positive for the Panthers. Krauser shot 30.6 percent and averaged a little more than 11 points per game in Pitt’s losses. He was 5 for 17 from the field against St. John’s, 4 for 11 against Connecticut, 3 for 8 against Georgetown, 3 for 16 against West Virginia and 2 for 10 against Seton Hall.
I can’t simply subscribe to just one player needing to step up. You are then presuming everyone else will be about average. Will Louisville win if Palacios has a good game but Dean struggles? How about Pitt if Gray is subpar while Krauser gets hot? Either team might still win, but I like Pitt’s chances more if everyone plays about their season average.
