By Russ Brown
NKy Tribune correspondent
LOUISVILLE — During Rick Pitino’s press conference Friday afternoon, he was asked if he felt good about his Louisville basketball team’s second-place status in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and he quickly sounded a note of caution.
“I wouldn’t read too much into that,” Pitino replied.
Game Tracker: Virginia (16-4, 5-3) at Louisville (17-3, 6-1); 1 p.m., CBS (WLKY-TV in Louisville); Announcers: Kevin Harlan, play-by-play; Bill Raftery, analyst
He shouldn’t, and neither should anyone else. It’s true that nearing the halfway point in the ACC race, No. 16/14 UofL (17-3) is in the thick of the title chase, but there’s an important caveat. The Cards’ 6-1 league record has been compiled primarily against the weakest teams.
UofL’s only victim currently in the upper division is Pittsburgh, which is in fifth place with a 5-3 record. In fact, the Panthers are the lone team the Cards have beaten who own a winning record in conference play.
Otherwise, the clubs Louisville has defeated are 11-28 and are near the bottom of the standings in 9th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th.
Now the Cards’ path is about to get tougher — much tougher. Of their last 11 games, eight of them will be against Top 25 outfits (although No. 24/20 Duke, which has lost four of its last five, and No. 25/NR Notre Dame, which was shellacked by Syracuse Thursday, are likely to drop out of the polls Monday).
The gauntlet begins Saturday afternoon at 1 o’clock in the KFC Yum! Center against two-time defending ACC champion Virginia (16-4, 5-3) and continues on ESPN’s Big Monday telecast with No. 2/1 North Carolina (18-2, 7-0).
Then after a breather against woeful Boston College (0-7) at home comes back-to-back road games at Duke and Notre Dame.
All in all, “sounds nauseating,” said Pitino.
One consolation is that neither Virginia or Duke is nearly as strong as expected. Nor are the Irish, who are also without injured star guard Demetrius Jackson indefinitely.
Virginia had dropped three straight ACC road games to non-contenders — at Virginia Tech (70-68), Georgia Tech (68-64) and Florida State (69-62) — before needing a miracle finish to edge Wake Forest 72-71 for its first league win away from home.
We’re struggling a little bit,” Cavaliers coach Tony Bennett said. “We’ve got to improve. We’ll take the win. The quality wasn’t there the way we need it to be, but it did, I guess, get the monkey off our back as far as a road win in the conference.”
Virginia pulled out the win over Wake by scoring 18 points in the final 1:23, including nine in the last 15 seconds and sophomore guard Darius Thompson banked in a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to complete the epic comeback.
“Deep down inside, if I’m going to be honest, you’re like, ‘This isn’t happening,'” Bennett said. “Maybe this will be a boost.”
Bennett, like Pitino, has been especially displeased with Virginia’s defense, which has been a trademark of the Cavs. But in conference games they are allowing opponents to shoot nearly 40 percent from 3-point range, 46 percent overall, and are forcing just 10 turnovers per game.
“Hard to win if you can’t get stops,” Bennett says.
But Virginia has been solid offensively. It is second in the nation in turnovers per game (9.3), eighth in field goal percentage (49.6) and 17th in 3-point percentage (39.9).
Junior guard London Perrantes leads the ACC in 3-point percentage (52.7, 39-of-74) and senior forward Anthony Gill is second in the league in field goal percentage (60.1). Gill is averaging 15.0 ppg and Perrantes 11.7, but Virginia’s leading scorer is senior guard Malcolm Brogdon at 17.6 ppg.
“They’ve got a terrific offensive basketball team,” Pitino says. “They can score in bunches, they’re a great perimeter-shooting team. Gill on the inside is lethal, very difficult to stop.”
Partly because of Virginia’s deliberate style of play and partly due to league parity, Bennett expects the game to come down to the final few possessions, similar to last year when both meetings went down to the wire.
The Cavs won the first game in Charlottesville, 52-47, then UofL prevailed a month later in the regular season finale as unlikely hero Mangok Mathiang hit a 15-footer at the buzzer for a 59-57 victory. Mathiang won’t be around to produce another dramatic finish this time because he is recovering from a broken foot.
“I say it all the time, it’s a fine line,” Bennett says. “Even in our wins, they’re ‘possession’ games. I told our guys, as long as you get after it and represent the right things in terms of how we need to play, and respect each other and represent those pillars in our program, then you should be freed up to do what you can. Wherever that takes us, it takes us.”
Pitino says he never knows what to expect from his team from one game to the next, pointing out that they made an “unheard of” 41 defensive mistakes in Wednesday’s 91-83 win over Virginia Tech and totally ignored the scouting report.
“I don’t know who is going to play well on this team,” he said. “We are a work in progress. The one thing we don’t do is jump to conclusions. We’re just trying to get this team where they need to be at the end of the year. We’re super-excited to be 17-3 at this point.”
We can safely say that Louisville is pretty good. How good? We’ll find out in the next two weeks or so. Maybe sooner.
“Exciting weekend coming up,” Pitino said.
JOHNSON, NANU AILING–Sophomore forward Jaylen Johnson, who had 11 points and nine rebounds in at Virginia Tech, has a sore elbow suffered in that game and his status for Virginia is uncertain. Center Chinanu Onuaku has the flu, but Pitino said he expects the 6-10 sophomore to play. Neither player practiced Thursday.