RE: Louisville best team in Big East?
Far from a sure thing, but I think we can be in the discussion. We'd need to take out Georgetown at home on Saturday night to even begin to make the claim. UConn is red hot, and ND is in 2nd place, although I honestly don't see them making it past the opening NCAA weekend. To be honest, I don't diagree from the respect of picking UofL to possibly go further in the NCAA than anyone else in the league, but of course I am far from unbiased on that one!
I see it like this. We have the talent to play with anyone in the country, and I did say anyone. The team has some guys that are not completely disciplined however, and when a few of them regress and forget what the Pitino gameplan was, we can get beat. When we play smart, and by smart I mean play the defense we are capable of and take a limited amount of contested shots on offense, I like our chances against almost anybody.
We are far from unbeatable though, as our record obviously shows. We had horrible shot selection against UC and UConn, and got beat by both, even though in each game we took a shot in the last 5 seconds that would have won the games had they gone in. Seton Hall was honestly a fluke in my opinion. UofL was up 14 about halfway through the 2nd half. At that point we fell back into the poor offensive execution. The fluke part was Seton Hall, or more so, Jeremy Hazell, on offense. Hazell alone made 8 three's, and a post-game film breakdown revealed 6 of them were from 25 feet or further out. Tough to stop that once a career shooting night.
No excuses though, we have already dropped 3 league games, even if we would like our chances in a rematch. Georgetown has pulled out more of the games where they played poorly, and thus they are still a definite favorite to win the regular season title. In the Cards' 7 conference wins, they are winning by an average of 18 points a game. Great teams pull out those close games though, and they haven't done that yet.
The NCAA is a long way off still, but right now UofL is probably playing better than the seed they'd receive. Again, I'm biased, but my guess is a team slotted in say a 3 seed wouldn't be thrilled to see UofL as the 6 seed in their bracket for a 2nd round matchup.
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