By Donnie Niehaus And Andrew Krumme

To win its first-ever Conference USA men’s basketball regular season title, the Cards defeated both Charlotte and DePaul in what were, for many players and fans, two unforgettable games.

Senior Larry O’Bannon gave a notable final performance against the 49ers before head coach Rick Pitino pulled him from the game, putting an end to one of the most memorable Senior Nights in recent seasons.

The Charlotte game helped determine the top seed for the Conference USA tournament, and O’Bannon put on a quite a show for the sixth-largest crowd in Freedom Hall history.

With 9-10 from the field and a perfect 5-5 from behind the arc, O’Bannon netted 26 points in the first half (the school record for points in a half) and helped guide the Cardinals to a big 94-82 victory over #21 Charlotte.

Charlotte jumped out to an early lead behind the sensational sharp shooting of Brendan Plavich. His arsenal included a 35-foot bomb that even the Freedom Hall crowd appreciated.

However, the Cards’ offensiveweapons had an answer to every Charlotte score. Junior Taquan Dean buried six 3-pointers on the way to a 27-point effort, and O’Bannon’s career high of 33 was too much for Bobby Lutz’s club.

“You have to give them credit. They are terrific and they took us out of things that we liked to do. Their zones were effective. [Larry] O’Bannon was great. They played very well and they deserved to win,” Lutz said in a post-game interview.

Charlotte kept the game close for much of the first half, but a late flurry by the Cardinals built a 13-point lead at half time.

Never looking back, the Cards dominated the second half and everyone on the team chipped in. Ellis Myles had a memorable Senior Night as he recorded his ninth double-double this year with 10 points and 10 assists.

After shooting a season-low 30.2 percent from the field in last week’s win over Memphis, the Cardinals shot 57.1 percent from the field and hit 42.9 percent of their 3-point attempts.

The Cardinals’ win gave them their second 25-win season under Pitino.

But though the end of a successful season was in sight, one more bump still stood in the team’s path.

Pitino seemed a bit nervous going into Saturday’s game against DePaul on such short rest, explaining that his team was one that always valued the idea of preparation.

“The trap is that we’re coming off a very emotional Senior Night and now we play against a team on the Senior Brunch, with the game set for 11 a.m. [CST] on Saturday. We don’t have any time to prepare and DePaul is a terrific basketball team. We’ve got one game left and we want to keep on winning. We’re going to have a hell of a fight in Chicago because they’re an excellent ball club,” Pitino said.

The Cards hung tough the entire game, battling back and forth with DePaul. “We need to go in there and play a tough physical game to hang around and hopefully win the game in the closing minutes.” A final 3-pointer from O’Bannon and two free throws from Francisco Garcia, as well as Ellis Myles’ defensive moves virtually locked in the game and a regular season title for Pitino and his team.

“Winning this title was great because sometimes Cincinnati and us are up against it because of the unbalanced schedule. You don’t always get the breaks. This year, we had to go to UAB and play in front of their largest crowd ever. We go to Cincinnati and it’s always all-out, we go to Memphis and it’s their largest crowd of the year and we also played at Florida.

“We play great road basketball, but it’s been very difficult with our schedule on the road. Then, we also got lucky at times and blew some people out that we didn’t expect to blow out. This is a veteran team that understands what it takes to win,” Pitino said.

 

Chris Brown, Assistant News Editor, also contributed to this story.