By Matt Thacker
The Louisville Cardinals men’s basketball team defeated rival Cincinnati 67-50 Wednesday night in their first meeting since switching to the Big East.
“This was a great win for us, we needed it, obviously and we came through with great defense,” Head Coach Rick Pitino said.
After three straight losses in conference play, Louisville got back on track in what was an extremely critical game to get them back in the Big East hunt. Louisville played a suffocating 2-3 defense along with a variety of presses that forced UC to turn the ball over 25 times leading to 34 Louisville points.
With the bounce back win against the Cats, Cardinal faithful also saw Taquan Dean come back from a nagging high ankle sprain. Dean scored 16 points and also dished out six assists in 27 minutes of action, showing that the ankle is making process. Clearly, Pitino was pleased to have his senior leader back, “He’s great but really out of shape. We kept trying to get him 30 second blows on offense and defense. And under the circumstances, we would have struggled without him tonight. [Dean] had a great practice, I knew he’d be out of shape. A lot of people look at his stats and say he wasn’t playing great anyway. You’ve got to understand what he means to our basketball team. We’re one of the youngest teams in America he’s heart and soul of our team.”
Louisville opened the first five minutes of the game on a 13-4 run hitting two three pointers which equaled their entire total from last Thursday’s contest against UConn. They hit three more threes in the first half as they opened up an eighteen point lead with just under eight minutes to go in the half. However, they could not quite put the Cats away that early, and behind the play of Eric Hicks who scored 15 points while grabbing 17 rebounds, Andy Kennedy’s team stayed in the game and went into halftime down 36-22.
While Cincinnati was playing shorthanded with just over a handful of scholarship players, they battled as they have all year and came out in the second half on a 7-0 run. After a Pitino timeout at the 18:20 mark with Louisville’s lead shaved down to just seven, the Cards came out gunning. An Andre McGee three got it started and behind three more bombs from Dean, two Bryan Harvey free throws and a Brandon Jenkins steal and lay-up off the press, Louisville opened up a 22 point margin and never looked back.
With Dean clearly hobbling and David Padgett going out with a minor knee injury in the first half, Louisville’s pressure was the difference in the game. Kennedy recognized how much of an effect the constant pressure and turnovers affected his team, “Coming into tonight, our last three games, we turned it over in single digits. I think we turned it over tonight more than our last three games combined. It’s very uncharacteristic of our group. And it was across the board. Our playmaker, Devan Downey who is touted by many as one of the best freshmen in the country, myself included, he had a freshman moment tonight. He was 1 for 9 with five turnovers. So then you go to plan B, your all-league guy James White, and he’s 2 for 8 with five turnovers. And then you go to plan C, Jihad Muhammad, and he has six turnovers. So we were running out of options.”
The loss pulled the Cats even in league play with three wins and losses apiece, and they now must prepare for a trip to Georgetown who just took down undefeated Duke. Louisville pushed their league record to 2-4, 14-5 overall, and for now put the doubts of the Cards not even making the Big East Tournament on hold. They now must get ready for a trip to New Jersey to match up with Rutgers on Saturday at 2 p.m. This weekend’s game against Rutgers, who boast the Big East’s leading scorer Quincy Douby (23 ppg), also begins a string of three road games out of the next four for Louisville, the final being a rematch with UC at the Shoemaker Center on February 6th.
