Upcoming Weekend Huge For Louisville Basketball

Montrezl Harrel has become one of the hottest recruits in the nation over the past month. His short list  consists of Louisville, Florida, Alabama, and Cincinnati.

Louisville has a huge weekend ahead. We will be hosting several recruits on their official visits, including one of the nations hottest remaining recruits from the class of 2012, Montrezl Harrell. Harrell was originally committed to Virginia Tech but was released from his letter of intent after head coach Seth Greenburg was fired. Also visiting with Harrell will be Virginia Tech transfer Dorian Finney-Smith.

The Cards are also hosting two of the top players from the class of 2014 this weekend. AAU teammates Keita Bates-Diop and Malek Harris will be on campus making this a very busy weekend for the Louisviille coaching staff.

Coach Pitino and his staff have been trying to make room on the roster for Harrell and Finney-Smith and also have been hitting the recruiting trial hard to secure the future of Louisville basketball.

Injuries Continue to Plague UofL

Injuries continue to plague UofL even in the offseason. In his press conference introducing Kareem Richardson as the new assistant coach and Doug Davenport as the new video coordinator today, Coach Pitino dropped a bomb on #CardNation. Transfer and co-captain of the 2012-2013 Cards, Luke Hancock has suffered a shoulder injury and will require surgery. The injury is on his shooting shoulder but he will be 100% by the start of the season. No details on exactly what kind of shoulder injury it is, but hopefully it is nothing like that of Wayne Blackshear.

Unfortunately Hancock isn't the only Cardinal who has suffered an injury lately. Apparently Gorgui Dieng suffered a concussion during the Kentucky game in the Final Four. It was not discovered until after the game. No worries however, because he has already been cleared to play.

Hopefully (however unlikely) these are the only injuries we suffer this year. We all know how bad injuries have been over the past two seasons. The Cards have high expectations this season and we will need every piece to follow through with our Championship aspirations.

Kareem Richardson Introduced as New Basketball Assistant

The Louisville men's basketball program has a new addition. Coach Rick Pitino introduced Kareem Richardson in a press conference today as Louisville's newest assistant coach. Richardson spent last season at Xavier and the previous three years at Drake as the assistant head coach. He replaces Richard Pitino as the recruiting coordinator. Richardson is young, motivated, and has a track record that qualifies him for the position.

Pitino said he almost hired Richardson last year for the same position. While he was considering him for the job last year, Pitino called seniors at Drake to get a feel for Richardson. He was blown away by the feedback he received. The players loved him and had nothing but positive things to say. Pitino gave high praise on Richardson's "knowledge of the game" and his hard work on the recruiting trail is exactly what we need.  The amount of time Gorgui Dieng and Chane Behanan will be at UofL is uncertain, and we will be on the recruiting trail extremely hard to replace those two monsters in the paint.

Louisville Finishes Season No. 4 In Coach's Poll

After their amazing run, the Louisville Cardinals finished the season as the number four team in the nation. They were ranked no. 18 in the previous poll. The Cards finished fourth behind Kentucky, Kansas, and Ohio State and made the biggest jump in the rankings of the four. Louisville finished the season with a 30-10 record. Several early polls for next year have them ranked in the top 5, some as high as number 1. Dick Vitale posted this tweet announcing his pre-season picks for next year.

UofL Releases 2012 Football Schedule

The Louisville football team released its schedule for the upcoming 2012 season. The Cardinals will host seven games this season including the season opener against arch rival Kentucky on September 1st. The next two games are also at home versus Missouri State on September 8th and North Carolina on September 15th. The schedule includes three nationally televised games including the game against a solid North Carolina team, rival Cincinnati, and the regular season finale at Rutgers.

2012 University of Louisville Football Schedule
Date	Opponent	Time	Location
Sept. 1	KENTUCKY	TBA	Papa John's Cardinal Stadium
Sept. 8	MISSOURI STATE	TBA	Papa John's Cardinal Stadium
Sept. 15	NORTH CAROLINA (ABC/ESPN/ESPN2)	TBA	Papa John's Cardinal Stadium
Sept. 22	at FIU	TBA	Miami, Fla.
Sept. 29	at Southern Miss	TBA	Hattiesburg, Miss.
Oct. 6	OPEN
Oct. 13	at Pittsburgh*	TBA	Pittsburgh, Pa.
Oct. 20	USF*	TBA	Papa John's Cardinal Stadium
Oct. 26 (Fri)	CINCINNATI* (ESPN/ESPN2)	8:00 p.m.	Papa John's Cardinal Stadium
Nov. 3	TEMPLE*	TBA	Papa John's Cardinal Stadium
Nov. 10	at Syracuse*	TBA	Syracuse, N.Y.
Nov. 17	OPEN
Nov. 24	CONNECTICUT*	TBA	Papa John's Cardinal Stadium
Nov 29 (Thur.)	at Rutgers* (ESPN)	7:30 p.m.	Piscataway, N.J.
* denotes BIG EAST Conference game

I don't know about you, but I'm counting down the day until September 1st! CardNation is CardStrong! Let's win the BIG EAST Championship and get our BCS Bowl!

Card Fans Have Nothing to be Upset About

Although we didn't bring home the championship trophy like we wanted, #CardNation still has a lot to be proud of. We "shocked the world" by making it to the Final Four. But not only did we make it to the Final Four, we challenged the #1 team in the nation and gave them a run for their money. I was very pleased with the turnout of Louisville fans in New Orleans. We represented the right way and earned our respect.

And it only gets better! I feel as if the program may have turned a corner in becoming a true national powerhouse. We bring back an entire Final Four team with the exception of Chris Smith and Kyle Kuric. We add transfer Luke Hancock to the team, we return an excellent shooter from injury in Mike Marra, and we also add a freshman PG in Terry Rozier. It may be a little early to look ahead to next season, but the sky is the limit for the 2012-13 Cards.

Keep those L's up Cards fans and put some shades on because the future is BRIGHT!

Angry Birds: Final Four Ticket Scandal Upsets UofL Students

Louisville reaching the Final Four has been the most exhilarating experience I can think of over the past few years. This one is even sweeter than the one in 2005 in my humble opinion. But for students at the University of Louisville, this week has been bitter-sweet. The University received 710 tickets that were reserved for students at a special price of $25. The tickets were supposed to be available on Monday at 10 a.m., but due to an unfortunate event many UofL students are upset that they were unable to get tickets.

A mass email was sent out Sunday informing students on how to obtain the $25 tickets on Monday morning. The link was supposed to go up at 10 a.m. but a pulled fire alarm delayed the posting of the link about 15 minutes. During this 15 minute time span, it is reported that the link was leaked by an unknown intern in the athletic department and that only eight tickets were purchased before the general student population had access to them. These tickets were reportedly revoked by school officials. Another problem that occured was that the Student Government Association (or SGA for short) posted the link on the organizations Twitter page. The problem with this is that not all students use Twitter and the ones that do may or may not follow the SGA's page. At the time of the incident I checked the SGA's Twitter account (@SGAUofL) and they had only about 1,100 followers. The student population at UofL is around 20,000.

The Twitter world on the other hand has a totally different version of the story going around. It has been said that SGA officials gave the information to friends who then sent the link out in mass texts. This caused an unfair advantage to students who were impatiently waiting for the link to post to the schools athletic site, UofLSports.com.

I interviewed Randy Woodford, a student at UofL. Randy says that he was sititing at his computer refreshing the link every few seconds and when the link did finally appear, the tickets were somehow already gone. This incident did not sit well with UofL students and even made the local news.

I for one, do not really buy the University's version of the incident. The whole situation was handled terribly and has left many students very upset (including myself as I was also unable to purchase tickets.) To make matters worse, it has been reported that several members of the SGA were able to get tickets.

While this incident was very unfortunate, we still support our university and the athletic program. Time heals all wounds and a win over Kentucky would be an instant cure. Go Cards!

Russ Smith Wins Over Louisville Fans

I'll be honest...last year Russ Smith might have been one of my least favorite Cardinals...but after the season he's had this year and the effort he has shown game in and game out, he has climbed his way to the top of my list. Coach P is hard on Russ but he takes it in stride.

Check out THIS (click link) LEGENDARY clip as Russ crashes Coach Pitino's post game interview after the win over New Mexico Saturday night.

Here is Russ' post game locker room interview..(funny part towards end)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw5lroyr60U

Cards Get New Uniforms for BIG EAST Tourney

Adidas has provided the Cardinals with new, "ultra-lightweight", uniforms! If you know me you know I'm not big on Adidas gear, (especially shoes) but these unis are pretty sweet! These uniforms are about "28% lighter" than our previous ones.

We will play in the gray tonight. The Cards haven't been playing well lately so hopefully this will give them the new attitude they need to make a push this post-season.

Chane Behanan Named to BIG EAST All-Rookie Team

Chane Behanan has been selected to the BIG EAST All-Rookie team. Chane has been a very pleasant surprise for the Cards this season. I knew he would be a starter coming into this season but I did not expect him to be the man child he is. He has been an absolute force in the majority of games this season averaging 9.3 points and 7.6 rebounds per game.

I can't recall Louisville having a player as ferocious in the paint as Behanan over the past 11 years. In my opinion he has been the most consistent player on the team this season. Behanan recorded double figures in scoring in 15 games and double figure rebounds in 8 games. He also recorded 6 double doubles this season.

WBB: Shoni Schimmel and Bria Smith Named to All-BIG EAST Teams

Yesterday the BIG EAST announced its Women's Basketball Regular Season Awards. Louisville players Shoni Schimmel and Bria Smith both received All BIG EAST honors. Schimmel was named to the All BIG EAST team and Smith to the All-Freshman team.

Schimmel has lead the team in scoring, assists, and steals per game this season. She was named to the All BIG EAST team as a freshman last year as an honorable mention. Bria Smith was a unanimous selection to the All-Freshman team after making considerable contributions to the team, especially on defense averaging nearly two steals per game.

The Cardinals will play the winner of the Villanova /Seton Hall game in the BIG EAST Tournament Saturday at 6:00 p.m.

Ohio State Linebacker Jordan Whiting will Transfer to Louisville

While the basketball team has been struggling, the football program has been adding weapons almost daily. The newest addition to the Cardinal family is Louisville native Jordan Whiting. Whiting is a Trinity graduate and committed to the Buckeyes out of high school. With all the turmoil that has been going on at Ohio State Whiting didn't see himself rising in the depth charts, especially with a new coaching staff coming in.

He made the announcement through his twitter page tweeting "I will be attending University of Louisville and will be a Cardinal for the remainder of my college career as a student and athlete!"

Since he is transferring NCAA rules force Whiting to sit out next season. He will be eligible to play his senior season in 2013.

This Senior Night not so Memorable

So Senior Night was an epic fail. We lost to a South Florida team who hasn’t won a game here in forever and we struggled to put 50 points on the board. We scored only 17 disappointing points in the first 20 minutes of the game. 17 points in a half is just plain embarrassing. To top it off we shot less than 35% from the field and got outrebounded by 10. All of these things together are a recipe for disaster. This is the formula for how to lose a basketball game.

Prior to the game Coach Pitino talked about playing at a faster pace to jumpstart the offense. That did not happen at all. In fact, it seemed as if we slowed it down a little bit. Our defense forced plenty of turnovers but the offense just could not capitalize and we often went on long scoring droughts. The Cards went on a total of six droughts of three minutes or longer; the worst being a nearly 7 minute drought midway through the second half after the Cards had put together a decent run and taken the lead earlier in the half.

I’m beyond disappointed in the way this season has been going as of late. Sure we have had more than our fair share of injuries, but that is no excuse for having the poor offensive season we’ve had thus far. Even at the beginning of the season when we were playing “Cupcake U” every night we’d rarely crack 70 points. According to ESPN.com we have the 128^th ranked scoring offense in the country. We simply can’t put the ball in the rim. I have my personal opinions on why this is so, but that’s for another discussion. In the mean time we need to focus on Syracuse and the upcoming BIG EAST Tournament.

Kyle Kuric relects on his time at Louisville

Found this VIDEO at courier-journal.com of Kuric talking about the past four years in a Louisville uniform.

Key Points

*Says Preston Knowles is a big reason he improved

*His best personal game was against Syracuse in the last game at Freedom Hall

*Most memorable moments were Syracuse game, the "Miracle on Main" versus Marquette last year, and winning the regular season and post season BIG EAST championships as a freshman.

*Kyle's Corner has always been his hot spot

*He wants to be remembered.

And he will....How could we forget THIS

Kyle gave us great effort every time he was on the floor. He will be missed. #C1L4

USF Game declared a "Red Out"

Wednesday's home game against USF is Senior Night and has been declared a "Red Out." Come out and support our seniors Kyle Kuric and Chris Smith. Coach Pitino has made it clear that this will also be Jared Swopshire's final season with the Cards although he has another year of eligibility.

Women's Basketball ends Regular Season with a 63-53 Victory over Seton Hall

It has been an up and down year for the 17th ranked U of L women's basketball team, but the Cards finished out the regular season last strong night with a 63-53 win over Seton Hall. RS Freshman Shawnta' Dyer had another impressive game scoring a career-high 22 points. Junior Asia Taylor also had a big game managing to pull in a career-high 12 rebounds.

The Cards have really turned it on winning four of their last five and are playing very well heading into the conference tournament. The Cardinals have earned a first-round bye in the tournament. The bracket will be released tonight after all conference games have been played.

Peyton Siva named Play of the Year Finalist

Peyton Siva has been named as a finalist for GEICO'S Play of the Year award. The Cards played Vanderbilt earlier in the season and Siva hit the game winning layup with 1.4 seconds remaining. Check out the video here.

Louisville vs. Pitt Recap

Yesterday’s 57-54 victory over Pitt was hard to watch at times. The offense struggled for long stretches and we only scored six points in the first eight minutes of the game. The halftime score was 25-24 and it didn’t get much better in the second half.

Although we didn’t play great offensively, there were some bright spots in the game, the first being a healthy Wayne Blackshear. He has struggled with a shoulder injury all season long and tweaked the same shoulder last week. He played only five minutes and went 0 for 4 from the field, but don’t let those numbers give you the wrong impression. Coach Pitino did not plan on playing Blackshear until he was approached by the team trainer Fred Hinas. “Fred came up to me before the game and said ‘He’s ready to play coach.’ But he’s not ready to play because he doesn’t know the plays and he hasn’t practiced.” Pitino went on to say “I’m trying to get him some game experience but I’m putting him in a bad situation because he doesn’t look good.”

Another bright spot was the performance by Kyle Kuric. He went 4 for 7 from deep and finished with 17 points. This is big mainly because Kuric is coming off a night where he went 0 for 10 in the loss to Cincinnati last Thursday.

When asked about the stagnant offense and lack of scoring Pitino talked about picking up the pace. “This week we will work on playing at a faster pace. There will be more opportunities and we will look better offensively if we can create that. At the beginning of the year we wanted to run our 3-second offense, which is getting the ball past half-court in 3 seconds. We got away from that a little bit.”

(I think a little bit would be an understatement.)

The next game is Wednesday against a South Floirda team who is one game ahead of us in the BIG EAST standings. USF likes to play at a slower pace. This will be a chance to see how the team responds to Coach P’s challenge to play at a faster pace. Wednesday is also Senior Night for seniors Kyle Kuric and Chris Smith. I expect big nights from those guys. They should be more potent offensively with the faster pace and should have plenty of extra motivation with this being their last home game in a Louisville uniform. I expect an extra big game from Chris Smith who will be looking to redeem himself after going a combined 0 for 8 over the past two games.