By Russ Brown
Special to NKyTribune
LOUISVILLE — No one would dispute the widely-held opinion that the University of Louisville’s basketball team has shown solid March Madness potential with its performance against two Top-15 teams so far.
Well, maybe one person would.
Never mind that UofL (11-2) has turned in a pair of gritty performances in narrow losses on the road to top-ranked Michigan State (13-0) and Kentucky (10-2), going down by a total of a mere six points. (UofL dropped slightly in the rankings Monday, from No. 16/15 to No. 18, while UK moved from 12 to 10 in the AP voting and stayed at 11 in the coaches’ poll).
Or that MSU coach Tom Izzo and UK’s John Calipari both indicated that the Cardinals have a bright future. Probably neither coach would be surprised to run into UofL again in the Elite Eight or Final Four.
“Louisville’s going to do damage,” Calipari said following the Wildcats’ 75-73 win Saturday afternoon in Rupp Arena. “I don’t know how we’ll finish, but they will be one of those teams left standing. We may have them again.”
It all adds up to promising potential. Potential? Louisville forward Damion Lee doesn’t want to hear it. For Lee, a fifth-year senior, the future is now.
“Potential is just a word,” Lee says. “I look at potential more as a negative than a positive. You know, people look at you and think, ‘You’re good, but what could you be. At this moment you’re not really good.’ So I wouldn’t necessarily say it was encouraging, because we did lose. No basketball player, no athlete in general wants to be happy with a loss.”
Freshman guard Donovan Mitchell, who came off the bench to get eight points, five rebounds and three assists in just 21 minutes, echoed his teammate’s comments regarding the outcome, but he didn’t balk at the suggestion that UofL has shown potential heading into Atlantic Coast Conference play Sunday at home against Wake Forest.
Encouraged by two close losses to top-15 teams, Donovan?
“That’s not really our goal, though,” he said. “Our goal is to come out and win. The losses that hurt the most are not the ones you lose by 20, but the ones you lose by one or two, like today. We’ve got to take this loss and move on from it, work and get ready to play a tough ACC schedule. We’ll play a lot of games just like this one. We’ve got to come in and fix all the little things we messed up on.”
Asked if the Cards have shown potential to go on to an outstanding season, Mitchell replied:
“I personally think so. I think we’re going to be really, really good. We are a very physical, very intense, very tough basketball team. We’re ready for any evironment we play in and I think going forward we have our leaders, everybody knows their roles, and I think going into the ACC it’s going to be a fun adventure.”
Lee characterized the Cards as fighters who have to translate their determination into victories by making more plays down the stretch, especially in the final moments where they have fallen short in both defeats.
Against Kentucky, they fought back from a 16-point deficit after being outscored 22-6, including an 11-0 Wildcat spurt bridging intermission, to close within one point late, but couldn’t close the deal.
“We fight, but we have to end that fighting with winning the game,” Lee says. “In two games against great teams, the game was in the balance and we came out with losses. So for us, it’s finishing and executing down the stretch because in ACC play we’re going to be going into hostile environments like this.”
Lee also said the Cards need to have more of a sense of urgency, both in their practices and their games. As a fifth-year senior, along with guard Trey Lewis, Lee says much of the responsibility falls on their shoulders.
“It’s going to take your leaders leading,” he says. “I have to grow. Out leaders have to grow. We have to, as a team, collectively understand what’s important, and it’s defense.”
There were many positives in the latest marquee win that eluded UofL — among them, outrebounding the Cats by 10 on their homecourt, ourscoring them 38-24 in the paint and 23-11 on second-chance points, Mitchell’s relief work that provided a spark and Chinanu Onuaku’s game-high 10 rebounds.
But there is one area that has been a major problem in both losses — the poor play of sophomore point guard Quintin Snider, who has gotten buried by his opposing counterpart in both games. The scorecard: Denzel Valentine of MSU and UK’s Tyler Ulis: 46 points, 15 assists. Snider: 4 points, 2 assists, 2-13 FG in 53 minutes.
Using a Kenpom metric gauging individual effectiveness, with Snider on the floor all 40 minutes, UofL loses to UK by 18 points.
Going into the game, Snider was 10.1 ppg and 4.4 assists, but that was compiled against weak competition. Against the only two elite teams UofL has played, the Ballard High School product has disappeared. Ulis, who had 21 points, eight assists and just one turnover in 40 minutes, was 7-of-12, including 4-of-7 from 3-point range.
UofL coach Rick Pitino didn’t talk to the media afterwards, but he was critical of Snider’s defense in post-game radio comments to Bob Valvano.
As would be expected, though, assistant coach Ralph Willard defended Snider when asked about him after the game.
“Q is going to continue to be a guy who gets better day by day and week by week,” Willard said. “We are very happy where Q is, and we think he’s going to be better when we get into January and February.”
He had better be, or UofL’s chances for beating quality teams will take a serious hit unless Pitino can find a capable replacement. But his options are limited, with Lewis being the only other experienced guard on the roster.
Pitino ‘explains’ absence
In a blog entry posted Monday Pitino offered an explanation — sort of — for skipping his post-game press conference Saturday. Pitino wrote:
“Let me set the record straight about not doing a postgame press conference. I told Kenny Klein and Paul Rogers 24 hours before the game that it didn’t matter, win or lose, I would speak to our fans through our postgame radio interview and Ralph would speak with the media. I’ve done the same after a victory at home. It is an ACC rule for me to do the postgame interviews for league games, but not for non-conference games.
Klein is UofL’s sports information director, while Rogers handles play-by-play duties on the school’s radio network.
“Once every two years, it’s an extremely emotional and difficult experience for me to coach in Rupp Arena,” Pitino also wrote. “I knew that when I accepted the job at Louisville, but it’s never easy. We gave them credit for the victory and we hope to grow after the loss.”
For what it’s worth, I’m not buying Pitino’s excuse. If he had told Klein about his intentions earlier, why wasn’t the media informed? We stood outside the locker room for about 15 minutes waiting on Pitino, with Klein standing not more than 10 yards away the entire time and not a word was mentioned about Pitino not showing up until shortly before Willard appeared.
Klein is one of the best SIDs in America. No way would he let us wait for Pitino without telling us about the revised press conference plan if he had known. We have always been informed of any pre-arranged changes either before, during or immediately after a game.
I’m not going to speculate on Pitino’s motives, but this is one of his comments to Valvano in the radio interview:
“I don’t like losing, especially to these guys. It upsets me about as much as anything. I have to go out and see a high school tournament tonight, which I’m not looking forward to. I’ve got a day or two off and I’m not going to enjoy myself after this loss.”
Quotable
“They were f-a-a-r.” Mitchell on several deep 3-pointers by Ulis and Dominique Hawkins (3-for-4).
Russ Brown covered University of Louisville athletics for over 30 years, including 15 for The Courier-Journal in Louisville. He is senior writer/editor for the Louisville SportsReport, which he helped found, and also writes for Cardinalsports.com. He covers Louisville men’s basketball and football as a KyForward correspondent.