Around this time of the season in 1836, Antonio López de Santa Anna wore down the stalwarts in the mission, and prevailed over the locals in the Battle of the Alamo.
Louisville’s 82-71 grind of a win on Saturday in the longhorn town of Fort Worth, if not nearly as significant or bloody, was similar in that the Bears finally wore down and were overcome.
As a thing of beauty, the Cardinals’ victory in front of lots of empty seats was anything but.
Yet the Cardinals 19th W of the campaign it was.
After some serious strangeness and frankly absurdity in the opening frame, the Cards found some ballast right before intermission to knot it at 34.
Then after briefly surrendering the lead in the 2d, immediately grabbed it back on a J’Vonne Hadley runout deuce, a stop and Mikel Brown three point trip at the stripe, an MB pilfer and feed to Sananda Fru for a 46-39 lead.
The offensively challenged Bears measure was kept the rest of the way.
Despite some helter skelter U of L passing. Mark it 9 giveaways after the break.
The Cards were spraying passes like a lawn sprinkler in August.
Louisville’s pressure defense, including some effective trapping and seriously effective transition getbacks, won the day.
* * * * *
It’s hard for me to shake the visuals of that cockamamie opening stanza.
For the second game in a row, Coach Pat Kelsey got cute, challenging an out of bounds play, this time around losing a timeout just over a couple of minutes after tip. (Monday last he did it against NC State before a minute had passed.)*
*The loss of the timeout could have kicked the Cards in the ass. U of L needed to use one later when it couldn’t inbound the rock. And PK — getting in touch with his inner Dana Kirk — called his last timeout with over three minutes left and the tilt not yet secure. Denny’s head was spinning.
And then there was the sideshow phenomenon, a curiosity known as Kasean Pryor, who displaying all the maturity of a four year old who has missed his nap, was Teed up on his very first possession.
When he woofed at the home team’s bench, while the Cards were just dribbling the orange over midcourt.
PK wisely pulled him immediately. While unwisely and in a surprise inserting Pryor back in the game for a few minutes in the 2d.
How else did the Cardinals perform weirdly in the first half?
By fouling, fouling, fouling. Most often for two shots.
Baylor appreciated the beneficence. They drained all 15 chances and were +13 at the line over the Cards, who canned their only two.
Plus . . . plus . . . plus . . . Louisville was gaining some significant edge pushing ahead 23-16 with 8:42 left to halftime.
Just 5:03 later, the Cardinals trailed 25-32, having been outscored 2-16.
First Stanza: Mondo Bizzaro.
* * * * *
Yet, 20 minutes, 37 combined fouls later, the victory over a mediocre Scott Drew squad was claimed.
The star in the Lone Star: that rookie kid.
Mikel Brown Jr..
29 points. 8/14. 4/5. 9/9. Six assists. His disturbing — to be honest unacceptable — six turnovers (several late) were somewhat ameliorated by his five steals.
Louisville’s perennial MVP J’Vonne Hadley put up an almost invisible 20 point, 5 rebound, 3 assist gem.
His D led the way for the Cardinals, whose second half stop rate was the real key to the hard earned W.
Well, and hitting 15/23 from the field and 16/18 at the stripe in the 2d helped too.
— c d kaplan
Very few of the defenders of the Alamo were “locals”, or even Texans. The vast majority were mercenaries from other states, and even a few from other countries, with Tennessee supplying the most, and Kentucky the second most.
Dramatic license. You’re so literal.
Keeping you straight is a full time job.
So much for the history lesson. Who was your history teacher at Atherton anyway?
Irregardless, back to basketball.
I don’t have a problem with PK challenging calls early in the game, as long as he has good information. Apparently he did not. I happened to be driving and listening to Paul at the time. If I understood his description correctly PK called the challenge at the insistence of one or more of his assistants. Paul said after the call was upheld he was glaring at them. Challenges should be used strategically. The early one in the NC State game was a no-brainer. Easy win there. They blew it today calling that challenge.
As for use of timeouts. I sometimes thought Denny lost games because he was so set on saving at least one in case he needed it late in a close game. PK I thought called that last one at a great time. He had confidence that if they reset and settled they would win, or at least play even, the last few minutes. All we needed was to not fuck up. I agreed, and so it was.
Khani Rooths 0 three point attempts again tonight. That makes two attempted in the last three games. One made. You’re welcome, PK. Good thing he reads the comments here. I’m pretty sure I saved the season 😎
Rooths should never be farther than 10 ft from the basket on either end ala Herbert Crook. The best garbage man we ever had.
Seedy I saw your comment on the Chron about how silly the challenge was in the NC State game. Could not disagree more. It was a slam dunk win. It was clear on the Jumbotron replay that NC State had touched the ball last.
The thing about challenges is the right way to use them is situational. Early in the game? Needs to be known that you will win it. Like 95% sure. The NC State game it was essentially 100%. Otherwise it’s not wise to use them early. Even late, in certain situations thought needs to be given. If you’re down and about to lose there is nothing to lose. There are all sorts of different situations. The NC State game it was blatantly obvious for the entire arena to see we would win that one. You take that every time.
How many of our 6 losses do you think we would have won with Mikel playing?
???? The real question is how many Ws in the future with MB finding his game?
I was going to answer only one maybe, or perhaps a couple. Brown was having some kind of bad games early in the season, and was shooting in the low 20’s from beyond the arc. No way to know.
I had an opportunity to attend the game so we were at Dickies Arena. It is really a cool arena, despite the large boot greeting you at the entrance. Attendance announced at 3,314, I would say 60-40 Baylor, although they are only a 90 minute drive from Ft Worth. There were no bands, cheerleaders or mascots for either team, but they had piped in music equally representing both sides. Yes we got Joker and the thief in the under 8 timeout, albeit without the Ali intro. Being in a cool arena with great seats made it a better game than it actually was. For all the Cards foibles there was some good here, mostly better defense, Hadley getting worked into the offense more often, and MB’s game. I thought it better overall than his last game. I wasn’t worried about those late turnovers, one of which might have been an out of position teammate. The game had the feel of a 12 noon first round tourney game at a neutral site, with few fans and no crowd favorite. Good thing to get familiar with that.
I had planned to go. Got busy with a project, and also a little less enthused, I will admit, when we didn’t get to this point with three or so less losses. Canceled my trip. Still, this team has a puncher’s chance to make some noise. History tells us not to favor them when facing a true contender.
That is true about playing a true contender. Beginning of the season we were considering staying for the SMU game as well. Our friends who now live in Dallas had their plans change, and the two game trip became a bit less enticing as the season unfolded
Pryor should get a permanent spot at the end of the pine.