By Russ Brown
NKyTribune correspondent
LOUISVILLE — Judging the significance of Louisville’s 71-65 win over No. 2/1 North Carolina Tuesday night depends on who you ask. The immediate impact is indisputable, but what about down the road?
UofL coach Rick Pitino was borderline giddy after the No. 19/18 Cardinals (18-4, 7-2) had snapped the Tar Heels’ 12-game winning streak and tightened up the Atlantic Coast Conference race.
But he stopped short of claiming that the Cards had turned the corner and that more big things are in the future. Instead, he proceeded with caution.
“You know, I really just. . .I’m not going to play down the win and I am not going to get too upset with Virginia,” Pitino said. “I really don’t know how good this team can be because we are so inexperienced and so young.”
If nothing else, the Cards showed impressive resiliency. Pitino said he didn’t know how his players would respond after their 63-47 clunker against Virginia two days earlier, but he didn’t go as ballistic as he normally would have about such a slipshod performance, perhaps indicating that his current youthful squad has a somewhat fragile psyche.
“I knew the last four years about my team that they were so afraid of me they would never want to lose two games in a row,” Pitino said. “This team, I didn’t get after them. You have to know certain people, and this team you have to give them confidence. So I didn’t know, but now that I’ve seen it, I’m very impressed.”
UofL had lost to the three best teams it had played — Michigan State, Kentucky and Virginia. The Cards went into the North Carolina game with a 17-4 record, but without a signature victory, thanks to a combination of their earlier struggles against high-caliber competition, a weak non-conference schedule and a backloaded ACC slate that had them playing mostly second-division teams in January.
While acknowledging the magnitude of the win, which added some much-needed substance to UofL’s NCAA Tournament credentials, senior Damion Lee basically noted that you’re only as good as your last game and that it wouldn’t be prudent to draw any long-term conclusions from the upset.
“No. We’ve just got to take it game by game,” Lee said. “This win is definitely huge. We needed it to start rolling. It’s time. But we can’t look over any opponent. We know we have nine more tough games, doesn’t matter who we’re playing. It’s the ACC, the toughest conference in the country.”
Lee would get some argument on that last point from supporters of the Big 12 and even the PAC-12, but his point is valid.
Saturday, Louisville should breeze past visiting Boston College (7-14, 0-8), which has lost all of its league games by double digits and by an average of nearly 20 points.
However, after that, it’s back to the grind, with back-to-back road trips to Duke and Notre Dame within five days and a remaining schedule that primarily features the ACC’s toughest teams. So the energy, intensity and aggressiveness UofL took into the UNC game will have to remain at a high level to avoid any more embarrassing slipups.
Halfway through the ACC season, UofL — picked seventh in the preseason poll — is within one game of the league-leading Tar Heels and there’s no question that Monday’s win was a major step forward and produced validation. . .at least for the time being.
Several of the Cards were willing to attach more importance to the victory than Lee did. Chinanu Onuaku, who posted his eighth double-double of the season with 12 points and 10 rebounds, called it a “big statement win.” And Anas Mahmoud said he could see it paying dividends for the rest of the month.
“That’s a great thing for us,” Mahmoud said. “Beating a team like Carolina gives us a lot of confidence, showed what we can do and where we can go as a team.”
So this was a good sign of things to come?
“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely,” Mahmoud said.
Mahmoud, who came off the bench to get four points, four rebounds and three blocks in 17 minutes, turned in one of the game’s highlight plays. On a fast break midway through the first half, the 7-foot sophomore threw a behind-the-back bounce pass to Lee for a layup.
“It was clever,” Lee said. “I actually thought he was going to throw it up and when he passed it, I had no idea it was coming to me.”
Said Mahmoud: “I was running and I saw the defender and thought if I went all the way down he would take a charge. Even if I threw a regular pass I would still be going forward, so I realized I had to get out of the way. It was kind of tough. Damion told me, ‘good pass.'”
And when was the last time you saw a 7-footer leading the break?
QUOTABLE–UNC coach Roy Williams on guard Marcus Paige, who is 5-of-36 from 3-point range in his last six games: “He hasn’t shot it worth a frankety-frank for four or five games. Am I supposed to send him to Siberia? I love him as much as any kid Iíve ever coached. … You get the yips in some of you play golf in you go the long putter. Hell, there’s no long putter in basketball.”