Tag Archives: Chris Jones

Louisville Card File: Duke

joaniecardFact: Louisville’s task yesterday against the Blue Devils was going to be difficult under any circumstances.

U of L’s offensive inefficiency this season is well chronicled and statistically proven. Until Rick Pitino is able to nurture more points from Wayne Blackshear, Chinanu Onuaku, Shaqquan Aaron, David Levitch, Anton Gill or some combination thereof, the Cards are going to struggle against other top shelf teams.

Effective defense alone can only carry a club so far.

For the doomsayers, remember this. U of L is a perennial Top 25 school. Some years, that translates to a #1 or #2 seed. Other campaigns, like this one more than likely, it means a #4, #5 or #6. Deal with it. It happens. The folks who are faithful to the Gators, Sparty and the ‘Cuse are also wearing furrowed brows today.

The good news is that it’s still mid-January. There’s a full week before Louisville’s next encounter, a visit to Pitt. And, for all the nit picking with The Rick’s ways, he’s a competitor, and gives 100+% effort during the season to improve his teams. Continue reading Louisville Card File: Duke

Hoopaholic’s Gazette: Conference Craziness, Cardinals, Curiosness

b-ballIt is the time of the season.

When scenarios morph curioser and curioser in the Big Tent that is College Hoops.

Messrs. K and H assure the public/ Their production will be second to none/ And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!

Not the least stunning of which developments is viewing the sport’s preeminent color announcer, the usually straight forward Jay Bilas, showing up to do the Arizona/ Colorado game, wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Sitting alongside smirking Garciaphile Bill Walton, who, deadpan, pretending to be the voice of reason, intones, “Enough foolishness. There’s a game going on here. Let’s get to the action.”

This morning’s USA Today had a catch up article on this year’s doings. Two months into the season, the paper obviously felt compelled to catch us up on what’s been happening. The undercurrent, one supposes, being they thought we couldn’t possibly have been paying attention until the CFP was over and done.

Really? Continue reading Hoopaholic’s Gazette: Conference Craziness, Cardinals, Curiosness

Louisville Card File: Virginia Tech

joaniecardYou know it’s really a scrimmage disguised as a conference game when the Sosa play works to perfection.

The reference is obviously to Edgar Sosa, the less than beloved former point guard, who had the annoying propensity to fritter away scoring opportunities, when handed the rock in end of half situations. Dribble in this direction, dribble the other way, to little effect most of the time. Often, the ball would be stolen for negative last first half points.

Though I have no firm stats, anecdotal remembrance tells me the affinity of The Rick to give the ball to his PG with the clock winding down at the end of first halves — be it Sosa, for whom the phenomenon is named, or Siva, or Smith, or McGee, or Jenkins or Northern — works neither as well as the coach would like. Nor as fans, who dissect every Cardinal twist and turn, wish.

It’s supposed to be, I surmise, dribble, drive, draw defenders and dish. Or deliver.

Way more often than not, it’s not delivery, its’ DiGiorno, a cardboard made at home imitation of a pizza. No score. As opposed to a sublime slice of Impellizzeri’s pie, the equivalent of a trey. Continue reading Louisville Card File: Virginia Tech

Louisville Card File: North Carolina

joaniecardRepeat after me, University of Louisville Cardinal Fans, that’s right all of you, repeat after me.

The sky is not falling.

You can do better. Again.

The. Sky. Is. Not. Falling.

Okay, then. Yes, U of L could have beaten, should have beaten the Tar Heels. If Mango just hadn’t dribbled it off his foot out of bounds, if Wayne had “finally made a big shot” and canned that three, it they’d have cut off Paige’s lane to the hoop on the winning basket, if they’d have given up just one or two less offensive boards, if they’d gotten any points whatsoever off the bench, if they could have held on to a 13 point lead for 8:43, if, if . . .

All conceivable. But, trying to move beyond my default fatalism, I provide some perspective.

In only its third ACC game ever, second on the road, against a legit Top 25 team (#10 in Ken Pomeroy’s respected computer rankings), against a storied program with a Hall of Fame coach on its home court, giving up 17 offensive rebounds and 17 second chance points, being outscored in bench points 0-20, the Cards fell by but a single digit after a legit All-American candidate made a wonder shot high off the glass. Continue reading Louisville Card File: North Carolina

Louisville Card File: Clemson

joaniecardWednesday morning, during my weekly piano lesson, my teacher Chris Bizianes, also a prof at Bellarmine, and I discussed some musical theory.

Specifically, the Circle of Fifths.

While not getting too deep or specific — as if I could if I tried — it is a construct that helps explain the mathematical and harmonic relationship between key signatures. The progression of sharps and flats. A path to chord progressions that will sound melodic. The relationship between the 1, 4 and 5, etc, etc.

At this juncture, I’ll stop, before I’m chewing on my size 12s, before a reader who really understands the concept jumps my game, and get to why I bring this up while reviewing last night’s slog of a W over the orange and purple clad visitors from Clemson.

Which is that  U of L’s offense, as it has disturbingly been more oft than not, was off key, way out of pitch and — here comes another musical metaphor — devoid of any appreciable rhythm.

That Louisville remains a legit Top 10 team, at least so far, with only the 66th most efficient O in the land, according to guru Ken Pomeroy, is a testament to grit, talent, intense defense and wise scheduling.

Get used to it, kids. Watching U of L with the ball this season is root canal territory. The Cards’ D is our only anesthetic. Continue reading Louisville Card File: Clemson

Louisville Card File: Wake Forest

joaniecardOkay, okay, okay, everybody shush up for a second.

You too, Doc.

No, really, be quiet, I need to try and hear something.

 

 

 

Yeah, that’s what I thought . . . silence.

There now seems to be a void, the sound of silence, where just recently there was a cacophony from a most vocal segment of the Red & Black Faithful. They wanted Chris Jones gone, packed in a crate on a freight train back to Memphis. They were decrying every moment of his existence. The knee jerk reaction to Jones’s play and that recent flopping peccadillo turned the naysayers into blathering Michelle Bachmann territory.

And now, silence. Because, like Marvel Comic’s super hero Captain ComeToSaveTheDay, Chris Jones grabbed last night’s game in Winston Salem, Louisville’s first ever in the ACC, by the short and curlies and declared, “I got this.” Continue reading Louisville Card File: Wake Forest

Louisville Card File: Indiana

joaniecardNow that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!

Louisville 94, Indiana 74.

We learned that this edition of the Louisville Cardinals can take a punch, chew some canvas in the second half, then get off the mat to finish the fight as victor.

We learned — yet again — that Montrezl Harrell, when he stakes his claim to that semi circle around the hoop, is the Ruler of His World.

We learned that Terry Rozier, who unfortunately shall be toiling in a Utah Jazz or NJ Nets jersey next year, would, were he to decide to extend his stay on the Belknap Campus, become one of the elite all-around Cardinal guards . . . ever.

But let’s start with Chris Jones. Continue reading Louisville Card File: Indiana

Louisville Cardinal Hoops Scrimmage Report

joaniecardWe’re just five days, and an itty bitty Thursday night pigskin encounter on the gridiron, away from the half past High Noon tip off of the ’14-’15 basketball season.

And, oh yeah, how could I possibly forget, there’s that traditional Trick or Treat thingie Friday that ends the months long Halloween Season.

There are those who would say Saturday’s encounter against Barry, and that the following week against Bellarmine, are but “B” Game exhibitions, that the season doesn’t really start until Kenny Klein keeps official stats against Minnesota in Puerto Rico.

But I say if it’s part of the season ticket package, if the Kroger Krewe is in the house, If Sean Moth is asking “Who wants a t-shirt?” and one of the teams consists of players not enrolled on the Belknap Campus, it’s a real Cardinal Basketball Game.

* * * * *

Between Coach Rick’s frequent interludes as Mr. Microphone, the Cardinals played their last public inter-squad scrimmage on Sunday at the Yum!.

Here are some random, totally subjective observations. Continue reading Louisville Cardinal Hoops Scrimmage Report

Louisville Card File: Pitino’s Summer Progress Report

dunikcardMy fellow Cardinal fan Bruce and I have a running joke, which we invoke when we meet periodically for lunch.

Despite the ever increasing length of the basketball season — and we both thank Naismithius, the Hoops Deity for that — we meet more often than not when it’s out of season. Like this past Tuesday, the day before The Rick did a meet and greet with the press for a team update.

Bruce is always at mid-season excitement level, whatever the time of year. I will advise him “not to peak too early.” If we lunch in, say, mid February, he’ll ask, “Is it too early to peak now?”

Which I advise as a prelude to my admission that I feel a bit more pumped about U of L hoops than I know I ought to be this time of year.

* * * * *

I have a theory about next season’s team, which, reading between the lines, making assumptions from peripheral comments, I have extrapolated that Coach Pitino might also believe. Continue reading Louisville Card File: Pitino’s Summer Progress Report

Louisville Card File: Manhattan

dunikcardRule #1: Survive and advance.

It was no less an authority than Al McGuire, who once opined that you’d always have at least two nailbiters along the way, if you were going to advance in The Dance.

Last night, the Cardinals got one out of the way — 71-64 over Manhattan — in the Round of 64.

Remember style points matter not in the tournament. There are no Russian judges to please.

Score more points than the other team. Play in the next round.

* * * * *

At THE critical juncture of last night’s heart attack of a game, I was reminded of a conversation with Luke Hancock at Media Day before the season. I asked him how the Cards were going to fill the void of leadership with Peyton and Gorgui gone?

Without haughtiness or bravado, but with steel-eyed quiet confidence, he looked at me and said, “I’d like to think I had something to do with that.”

Point taken. Continue reading Louisville Card File: Manhattan