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.