since i last posted on here, i was hoping for both of our teams to run the table in december so our game would be another battle of Top 10 teams. you guys have obviously done most of your job, since your only loss was to easily the best team in the country. but my Cards had a disappointing game against Houston, and of course everyone knows about the missed traveling calls against UK that gave them the game (i think there are still some fans in Freedom Hall calling for a travel on Patrick Sparks)

anyways, i'm not here to talk about the UK-UofL game. i was trying to see what your feelings are about this Saturday's game. who do you think has the advantage? are you as excited about it as me? i somehow got cheap tickets off of some UC website back in October or November for it, so it will be my first true road basketball game (i've followed the football team to several places, but haven't had the chance to travel with the basketball team yet, except for the C-USA tourney game last year in Cincy against you guys...great game). so i absolutely cannot wait for this game...this week is creeping by.

as far as the actual game goes, i honestly think it's a toss-up. admittedly, i don't know too much about your squad this year, but i do know that UofL's play may decide the game. if they're shooting as well as they were against Southern Miss, then forget about it. but that goes for anyteam, i guess...anytime i team shoots 70+% through 3/4 of the game, that team is going to win. with that being said, it would be unfair to my players to expect them to shoot that well even once every 15 games, much less in back-to-back games. unless the Cards can come out shooting lights out from 3-pt land, i think it's UC's game to lose. i've only seen Jason Maxiell play a few times, and i don't know much about Eric Hicks, but i do know that Maxiell will be playing in the NBA someday, and they're both absolutely beasts on the boards, which has been an achilles heel for my Cards this season...i think they were actually outrebounded by Lindsey Wilson earlier this year. but then we dominated UK on the glass (the biggest team we've played so far this year) up until they knocked our best post player out of the game.

no offense, but I would take UofL's backcourt of Dean and Garcia over any in the country, even Illinois, Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State, UNC, or anyone. so I definitely give my Cards the advantage from the outside (but not to say that you don't have some tremendous players yourself...James White and Armein Kirkland are great, and could take over any game). our problem (again) is our front line size and depth. we have some skilled players inside, but i think it will be difficult for them to tough out 40 minutes against your bruisers. in a neutral site, i have to believe our teams are fairly even, but there's something about your city which doesn't allow us to beat you (maybe it's that shoemaker center environment...i'll find out about that on Sat. :) ). (except for that anomaly of a game a few years ago when louisville had one of its worst teams ever, and we won going away against a solid UC team...the worst jump-shooter i've ever seen, Joseph N'Sima, hit two clinching long-range shots)

so with all of this considered, my prediction for for this Saturday is as follows:

my head says: Cards 66 - UC 72
my heart says: Cards 80 - UC 72

p.s.
sorry if I rambled.

go Cards!

No, we aren't ready for the Cards, we're ready for the ECU Pirates. If you look past an opponent in league road game, then you end up with an L, aka Houston. I would ahve posted this rambling at 9:00 ESt after the game.

I give UC the advantage because it's at the Shoe. Neutral Court I think it would be a toss up or maybe a slight advantage to U of L.

I agree U of L has the advantage in the backcourt and UC has the advantage in the inside.

Keys for UC
1) they need to take care of the ball
2) Work the ball inside to Max and Hicks
3) Shot Selection

When UC passes the ball and takes care of it they can beat anybody in the country because they play great Halfcourt D and they rebound well. The problem is they play 1 on 1 too often and are careless with the ball at times.

Should be an entertaining game. Looking forward to watching Kirk/White battle Garica.

UC 68
UL 64

I think it will be a close game throughout but the Shoe adds just enough for a Bearcat victory. Should be a great game to watch!

The one thing about this game is like last year White will guard Garcia. And they both really enjoy that mathup. Garcia and Dean are a great backcourt but as we all know these games are really great rivalries. Hands Down! I enjoy coming into Freedom Hall and winning :D . But if Louisville shoots as well as they did @ Southern Miss they beat Anyone! This year we have Kirkland as an offensive option so yea it will be very exciting! GO CATS!!!!!

I like Garcia but Illinois has the best backcourt in the country, Louisville's is good but not among the Top 5 elite though I do think you guys have a Sweet 16/Elite Eight caliber backcourt so who knows. The key will be UC's defense. If UC imposes their defense like they have done against everyone, including Illinois, and as long as UC continues to execute offensively I believe UC will be fine, particularly since the game is at the Shoe. The X-factor will be that UC will look at this is a chance to atone for the Illinois debacle. A Top 20 team, in the Shoe, on nationally T.V., a few weeks removed from the Illinois game. UC should be hungry and focused towards winning that game.

good lord...Illinois is the better backcourt by far.

uoflcard,
I am not sure that UC can match up with Louisville's offense but I am not sure that Louisville can shoot very well against UC's defense so it should be an interesting game and a battle. Concerning the UK-UL game, if Louisville would have let Sparks shot the 3 pointer, well, you probably would have won. I seriously doubt if he would have hit that shot.

The Shoe makes the difference here....UC wins....I do think UL will pay us back at Freedom Hall

I think that UC will pull out a close hard fought victory. I think the UC home court advantage will give the team anough adrenaline to pull it our. I agree that Garcia vs. White / Kirkland is the story of the game. Garcia gets up for this game. He always plays well against us. I don't expect anything different this time. I worry about the (Pitino out of timeout factor). He seems to set up better plays out of the timeout against the Bearcats than any other opponent I can remember.

If we rebound well throughout, contain Miles and George/Palacios?? on the boards then we win. I think you will almost be able to draw a direct correlation between boards and victory in this game. Good Luck!!

I think I am going to contact the local chapter of Guardian Angels and make sure UOFLCARD makes it thru the OVER-THE-RHINE. Man, I was just kidding when I told him to wear his REBEL FLAG on his antenna.

Based on the game I just saw, I'd say:

Louisville 120
Cincinnati 85

UC was almost caught looking ahead and let East Carolina back into the game...atrocious defense.

UL looked completely focused in dismantling Southern Miss...so I'd say UL has an intensity edge going into Saturday.

I say that because where UL looked sharp and can concentrate on UC, Coach Huggins just said that he has to go back and "fix things" now, instead of concentrating on UL. I feel that gives UL the edge.

BearcatCarl Wrote:Based on the game I just saw, I'd say:

Louisville 120
Cincinnati 85

UC was almost caught looking ahead and let East Carolina back into the game...atrocious defense.

UL looked completely focused in dismantling Southern Miss...so I'd say UL has an intensity edge going into Saturday.

I say that because where UL looked sharp and can concentrate on UC, Coach Huggins just said that he has to go back and "fix things" now, instead of concentrating on UL. I feel that gives UL the edge.

CARL,
I will give ECU credit for the game. They must have banked in about 6 baskets on volleyed rebounds and as awful as a 3 point shooting team that they were, some of the guys actually seemed to get lucky with their shots. Foul trouble killed us and I see it happening a lot more in the 2nd half of the season. No big man off the bench is gonna kill us down the road. But this uc team does have heart. The team with Kenyon on it probably would have collapsed in this one.

Intensity edge to Louisville?! :eek:
You've got to be kidding if you don't think the Bearcats will be just as intense!

BearcatCarl Wrote:Based on the game I just saw, I'd say:

Louisville 120
Cincinnati 85

UC was almost caught looking ahead and let East Carolina back into the game...atrocious defense.

UL looked completely focused in dismantling Southern Miss...so I'd say UL has an intensity edge going into Saturday.

I say that because where UL looked sharp and can concentrate on UC, Coach Huggins just said that he has to go back and "fix things" now, instead of concentrating on UL. I feel that gives UL the edge.

Since none of UL's 107 pts against So Miss count against UC, I don't give a rats ****** what they did against them. Last I checked, So Miss. ranked 13th in CUSA in FG%D, and UC ranked 1st.

Hey fellas...relax. I was just mimicking Huggs' comments after the game. We all know how down he gets when the team doesn't play well. He was none too pleased with the defense.

It does not bode well, however, if UC has to spend time correcting problems 15 games into a season instead of focusing on a team with the weapons that UL has. I'm sure it will be a good game, and UC should play well...I guess I just miss the old days when UC would go in and pimp slap a sorry team like ECU. This team appears to lack a killer instinct - something we've been saying for going on 3 years with this particular group.

Maxiell is a different story. That guy has the heart of a lion.

first off, i would never fault someone for arguing that illinois, unc, or some other great team has a better backcourt than UofL. that's all speculation, and those are all great backcourts. but i honestly don't believe anyone's is "far" better than UofL's. that probably has something to do with my allegiance to UofL, but i'm trying to think of it as objectively as i can, and i really believe they are as good as anybody. those teams just have twice as much depth at every position, and have bigger, more skilled inside players, which is why they're much better teams as a whole

and secondly, i think neither team will have an edge in intensity. this is a great rivalry, one of the best in the country, and the games are always pulsing with adrenaline. even for the freshman out-of-towners who don't really have any prior feelings about this rivalry, their blood will be boiling on saturday.

i just hope it's a clean game, because it's too great of a rivalry for it to be tainted with any bad episodes ( that's not to say there isn't a thick feeling of bad-blood, because that's what makes it so special)

somewhere above, somebody issued their "keys to the game for UC". here's my keys to the game for UofL:

1.) take care of the ball. we had 24 turnovers against Houston, most of which were careless. we've had a problem with that all year. our offense is dangerous, but turnovers are just empty possessions. we can't afford to have more than a dozen.

2.) crash the defensive boards. i'm not hoping for or expecting us to dominate UC on the glass, but i just hope we can hold our own. in most of our games, we've given up wayyy too many offensive boards, and that can happen again.

3.) get the ball in the hands of Garcia and Dean. far too often, they both go minutes at a time without even touching the ball- and not even because they're being denied the ball by the other team, just because it's never passed to them and they don't go after it. especially Garcia, he's the key to our offense. Dean is one of the most dangerous long-range shooters i've ever seen at the college level (he reminds me of Dejuan Wheat, from the 1993-97 Cards), but Garcia is the guy who can take over a game offensively, not only from his own shooting and shot-creation ability, but his vision and creation-of-shots for his teammates. he needs to touch the ball on every UofL possession

4.) will Otis George be back? our frontline is very thing (lost 2 seniors to graduation, another big guy transferred last year, donta smith decided to go to the NBA, and Brian Johnson suffered a season-ending injury before the season even started) without Otis, we only have 3-4 guys who can play inside, and only 2 of which have a legitimate amounts of playing time, and one of which is a true freshman. no one is over 6-8, and sometimes their tentative when it comes to rebounding- the just run at the rim and hope the ball bounces to them instead of putting a body on someone. this is where we need Otis. he's not overly huge (actually he's kind of slim, expecially compared to Hicks and Maxiell). but he's the most intense player on the team, and he's always the most intense on the court. he's fearless and tenacious on defense and in rebounding. he's been out with a hairline fracture in his foot, and i don't think he's scheduled to return this Saturday, but Pitino has surprised us before

uoflcard Wrote:2.) crash the defensive boards. i'm not hoping for or expecting us to dominate UC on the glass, but i just hope we can hold our own. in most of our games, we've given up wayyy too many offensive boards, and that can happen again.

We have not done very well on the boards either...ECU outrebounded us? I that true...

No stats or averages will help in picking the winner of this one. It will be a wild game as usual and will probly be very suprising and a great game.