This is just an abbreviated early start. I have some morning offline duties before basketball all day. Back later.
Mike Ruth at the Card Chronicle has an excellent rundown — he doesn’t like Higgins and Burr either, so it isn’t just grumpy Pitt fans.
The sense from Louisville is that this was the Cards in the second half reverted to the way they had been playing before they showed up in Pittsburgh a month ago.
From the first dribble in the second half, this looked like the U of L basketball team we saw before it got the religion about sharing and protecting the basketball.
This looked like a perfect video for U of L coach Rick Pitino to show to his players for the rest of the weekend to prove to them that even though they won seven games in a row, they don’t have it all figured out.
Not when they kicked away an 11-point halftime lead against Pittsburgh in the Big East Tournament semifinals in Madison Square Garden last night. Not when they started the second half by missing six of their first seven shots with five turnovers.
One thing all Louisville partisans agree is that this was a jarring reminder to the Cardinal players not to believe their press-clippings.
Well, Pitt is now in the Big East Championship game for the 6th time in seven years.
Some are blase about it: “It is the day before Selection Sunday and that can mean only one thing: Pittsburgh must be playing for the Big East championship at the Garden. It’s practically a rite of spring.”
Others snarky, ” The perennial bridesmaids and preseason No. 1 pick to win the conference, Pittsburgh will be playing for the conference title for the sixth time in seven years after it outlasted Louisville last night in the second semifinal at Madison Square Garden, 65-59.”
Does anyone know where we can find the officiating assignment earlier in the day? I can’t believe its not listed on any sports betting website – i would think that it is important information.
If we win tonight, I think we will have locked up a 3 seed, with a chance at a 2 seed. If we lose, we’re guaranteed no better than a 3, maybe a 4. Don’t put it past the “committee” to screw us again. Ignore all that ‘bracketologist’ garbage – he is like the pollsters, bump up the winners, drop the losers – whereas the committee makes no sense at all. Sometimes they care how a team finishes, sometimes they don’t. We have no chance at a 2 with a loss no matter what he says, cause georgetown will have beat us 2 of 3, and refer back a couple years to uconn and us – when the committee came out and said ‘we bumped pitt down to a 3 seed cause it wouldn’t be fair to put them on the same line as uconn.’
According to the stat *they* created – we should be a 1 seed. Oh, i forgot, they…uh, i mean it is just a tool.
Who knows – the easiest thing to do is win tonight. Then, we should be a lock #2.
Ryan – save yourself some grief, don’t assume a win tonight means a 2 seed. Assume it means a lock on a 3 seed, and then you can be pleasantly suprised if we get a 2, and won’t have to complain and be pissed when we get jobbed as a 3.
If we lose, substitute 3 and 4 in above paragraph.
Remember its a bunch of turds in a couple of hotel rooms deciding this, not rocket surgeons. Nothing says they have to make sense.
I like renting weapons…
GREAT NEWS: HIGGINS REFFED THE K-STATE/KANSAS GAMES, one down, one retard to go…
I also agree the Louisville site’s write up gave a very good synopsis of the game and the Card’s miscues in the second half.
After seeing that Higgins and Burr were the refs I thought for sure we would be done, but was shocked to see the Cards had 23 fouls to our 13.
It truly is amazing that for 6 of the last 7 years we all have been busy watching the BET finals to see the Panthers.