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!