By Mitch Streufert
The 2009-2010 regular season ended with a bang for the University of Louisville men’s basketball team on Saturday, March 6. In Freedom Hall’s last game, the Cardinals defeated No. 1 ranked Syracuse University, 78-68. The Cards finished off the Big East regular season at 11-7 and now head to the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.
The Big East regular season champion, Syracuse, will be the No. 1 seed, while the Cards are sitting in the No. 6 seed position. The tournament will be jam packed with Top 25 teams, as Syracuse, West Virginia University, University of Villanova, University of Pittsburgh and Georgetown University are all ranked. Even the bottom teams in the conference will not be pushovers come tournament time.
“This conference is so competitive it’s scary,” said head coach Rick Pitino. “I was just watching St. John’s and DePaul play the other night and I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me. These are teams we are going to have to beat to defend our title.'”
By earning the sixth seed in the tournament, the Cards have gained a first-round bye. They will face the winner of the opening round game between the 12th-seeded University of Cincinnati Bearcats (16-14) and the 14th-seeded Rutgers University Scarlet Knights (15-16). The Cards faced the Bearcats on Jan. 24 in Freedom Hall, prevailing 68-60, and later defeated Rutgers in Freedom Hall on Feb. 6 by a score of 76-60. Even with past success against both of their potential first-round match-ups, senior guard Jerry Smith believes it’s a new season now.
“It doesn’t matter who we play in the first round or the second or any given day,” said Smith. “In the Big East, if you’re not focused you’re going to lose—plain and simple. Yeah, we beat Cincinnati and Rutgers in the regular season. The key word there is regular season. That’s done with. It is postseason time now. And both of those teams are fighting for their right to play in the NCAA Tournament.”
If the Cards prevail against Cincinnati or Rutgers in their first match-up of the tournament, they will head on to play the third-seeded Mountaineers of West Virginia. The Cards dropped a heartbreaker in Morgantown to the Mountaineers on Jan. 30, losing 77-74. They held a 4-point lead at the half, only to see it slip away as Bob Huggins’ squad outscored the Cards 37-30 in the second half.
Sophomore guard Kyle Kuric knows the team can’t overlook their first-round match-ups.
“We really can’t look ahead right now,” said Kuric. “We have to focus on this first game because if we lose that one we won’t even make it to play West Virginia. We looked over St. John’s before we beat Syracuse the first time this season and we got thumped by 19 points. Do I want another shot at the Mountaineers? Of course I do. But we have to take care of business against Cincinnati or Rutgers first.”
The Big East Tournament will kick off on Tuesday, March 9 with four games starting at noon. With the bye, the Cards won’t play until Wednesday, March 10, but will find out their opponent in the late game. U of L also drew the late bracket so they will play the winner of the first round game at 9 p.m. on Wednesday.
