By Trevor Joelson
Rick Pitino and team are headed to compete in the Jimmy V Classic after this weekend’s 99-69 win over the Sacramento State Hornets.
The Louisville Cardinals will take on the No. 16 Arizona Wildcats on Dec. 5 at Madison Square Gardens. The Cardinals’ season ended at the Garden last year in a National Invitational Tournament loss to South Carolina.
The Cards lost scoring leader Taquan Dean to graduation, but added one of the best recruiting classes in recent history. The class is led by Derrick Caracter, who stands at 6-foot-9 and 275 pounds. The game will be Caracter’s first regular season game of the year because of a suspension resulting from violations carrying over from high school.
Caracter and the Cardinals will go up against the High School National Player of the Year. The problem for the Wildcats is it was in the wrong sport. Chase Budinger was the top ranked men’s volleyball player in the country coming out of high school. He chose the more lucrative future of basketball and it has payed off. Budinger is leading the team in scoring and rebounds. He has a 42-inch vertical leap, can shoot the three and can handle the point. He even received praises from Michael Jordan who guarded him at his annual Flight School Camp.
The Wildcats have an extremely talented group of returners as well, headlined by preseason Wooden Award candidates Mustafa Shakur and Marcus Williams. Shakur is a 6-foot-3 senior point guard who averaged 11.2 points and nearly five assists per game last year. Williams is considered one of the most versatile players in the country. At 6-foot-7, he shoots 43.5 percent from three point range and can also establish himself as a threat in the paint.
Also in the Wildcats starting lineup is 6-foot-10 center Ivan Radenovic. The senior, hailing from Belgrade, Serbia has started out the 2006-2007 season very strong. In the five games Arizona has played so far, he averaged 19.2 points and 7.4 rebounds per game, including a 27 point outing against UNLV on Nov. 28.
The most intriguing matchup of the game might not even be played out on the court, but rather the sidelines. Arizona head coach Lute Olson and Louisville head coach Rick Pitino are regularly regarded as two of the best current coaches in America. Pitino surely remembers the last time he met Arizona’s head coach. Olson’s Wildcats got the best of Pitino’s Wildcats in the 1997 national championship.
The game will be televised on ESPN after the 7 p.m. matchup of Syracuse and Oklahoma State.Arizona even gave up their scheduled game to play the Cards.
“This is a quality opponent in the mecca of basketball, and the beautiful thing is that we get the ESPN,” said Ryan Hansen who deals with the scheduling of Arizona basketball.
