By Charlie Leffler
Coming into Friday night’s game against the Louisville Cardinals, South Florida head coach Seth Greenberg thought he had panned for everything. He knew that Reese Gaines was a dangerous shooter. He saw Ellis Myles rack up a double-double against the trees at Memphis. He knew that both Luke Whitehead and Erik Brown were capable of putting up big numbers. What he did not expect was for walk-on Bryant Northern to score a career high 21 points on 7-9 shooting from three point range to help lead Louisville to a 96-77 victory.
“I knew he could make threes,” said Greenburg, “he made two or three against us last year. But he made that one from really really deep and that really hurt us.”
At the 16:06 mark of the second half, a dunk by USF’s Greg Britton cut the Cards’ lead to four at 43-39. But a pair of Northern threes brackets a Will McDonald tip-in to push the lead back to eight.
With 7:33 left in the game, South Florida had narrowed the Cardinal lead to three at 63-60. But then once again it was Northern who hit back to back threes to pull Louisville back ahead by nine.
“Luke Whitehead was passing me the ball,” said Northern. “I’d hit two or three in a row and they reversed it to me in a 2-3 zone and told myself that if he didn’t come out on me I?m going to let it go. And once I let it go I knew I was in the flow.”
But it was not Northern’s shooting that Louisville head coach Rick Pitino was delighted with. “What was very impressive to me about Bryant Northern… is that he got in that guy’s (Reggie Kohn) jock and then denied him, and then made the shots,” said Pitino. “That’s what’s phenomenal. He shouldn’t have even had the ability to take the shot he should have been so tired.”
“Honestly I did,” said Norhtern. “I was out there chasing Reggie Kohn around and he’s one of the best passers in the conference? I got tired a couple of times and made some mental mistakes. Coach kept yelling at me, ‘don’t be selfish, don’t get tired, we’ll get a sub in for you.’ And I just tried to fight through it.”
After leading by 10 points at the intermission the Cards saw their lead repeatedly narrowed by the outstanding play of South Florida’s Altron Jackson, but U of L’s three-point prowess was too much from the Bulls. In the second half the Cars shot 68.8% from beyond the arc on 11-16 shots.
“It’s not great shooting,” said Pitino, “it’s great passing. Passing for 25 assists leads to open shots.”
Pitino did not know how his team would physically respond after having played a very tough road game in Memphis only two nights earlier. He knew that the Bulls would be an equally physical team. “It’s only normal that when you fight on the road, you fight so hard, fight so hard, to come back tired,” said Pitino. “And this (USF) is a team that you can’t sag. You’ve got to put pressure on the ball at every juncture of their offense, at every part of the floor, and that takes like a week off in the Bahamas to do that.”
For a while in the first half Whitehead, Myles and Gaines appeared as if they were playing free safety rather than forward and guard. The Bulls had 16 turnovers in the first half many of them were intercepted long passes.
“In the first half they did a terrific job of turning us over,” said Greenburg, “which I did not expect to happen this week. We really did a good job this week, (in practice).” The Louisville players appeared to be getting their hands on every ball, finishing the first half with 26 deflections and 41 in the game.
The Bulls’ B.B. Waldon came into the game as the third all-time leading scorer in C-USA history averaging 13.4 ppg. Against U of L Waldon only managed three points on 1-4 shooting. Greenburg was trying to utilize Waldon’s passing and get the ball inside to McDonald. “We’ve got to get B.B. more involved in the offense there’s no doubt about it,” said Greenburg. “We’ve gone so much with trying to get Will the ball that we’ve gotten away from getting B.B.’s scoring opportunities.”
Yet, it was not Northern alone who was going down in history. The records were falling as smoothly as the three-point shots that rained down from everywhere. Gaines’ 30 points were a new career high as he also hit seven three pointers. The 19 three pointers made by the Cards were not only a school record but an inter conference mark as well.
Whitehead handed out a career high seven assists. Louisville’s 25 assists were a season high, and Northern’s 7-9 shooting from three point ranged ties him for third with Cincinnati’s Steve Logan on C-USA record book for league play.
Jackson’s 25 points led South Florida.
“I’m really proud of our basketball team,” said Pitino, “because we had to dig deep down and effort of efforts. Reese Gaines couldn’t even walk, he was dead.”
