How silly to have wasted such a matchup this early in the NCAA tournament. How silly to have suggested through the seeding process that there are so many teams in the field better than Louisville. The tournament has had plenty of upsets and nail-biters through the first two rounds. But what it was lacking was a defining performance, one good team exerting dominance over another good team.
And that was Louisville's gift to March here Sunday, a crisp-moving, ball-hawking, sharp-shooting performance that resulted in a 76-54 victory over Georgia Tech. Coach Rick Pitino's Cardinals started the game firing three-pointers, just as his Kentucky Wildcats and Providence Friars did in previous years. The names of the shooters have changed from Billy Donovan, Antoine Walker and Jamal Mashburn to Francisco Garcia, Taquan Dean and Larry O'Bannon. But the results remain the same.
Leading by nine midway through the second half, Pitino ordered his team to play as aggressively as if it was down a dozen. And the result was that an anticipated nail-biter became a blowout for Louisville as Dean, the 6-foot-3 junior from Red Bank, N.J., fired three consecutive three-pointers to push the Cardinals' lead to an insurmountable 18 points with fewer than seven minutes to play.
Let Florida and Villanova lose big leads by sitting on the ball and playing conservatively if they want. Pitino was having none of it. If the Cardinals got the lead by playing pedal-to-the-metal, then that's how they'd keep it. As a result, last year's runner-up goes home while the Cardinals advance to the Sweet 16 and suddenly look like as great a force as any team in the tournament.
If the game didn't live up to the hype, Louisville's performance did. And it even caught Pitino a bit by surprise. Asked before the game how it could happen that teams as good as Georgia Tech and his Louisville Cardinals could meet as early as the second round, Rick Pitino deadpanned, "It could be bad seeding." Even Pitino knew he had gotten off a good line and laughed. "Strike that," he said of the zinger directed at the NCAA men's selection committee.
From the time the brackets were revealed last Sunday, Louisville vs. Georgia Tech stood out as something far too special for a second-round game. Louisville should have been a No. 1 seed. And Georgia Tech was only as low as a No. 5 seed because of an injury to B.J. Elder that sent the Yellow Jackets from 9-1 to 12-7 during the middle of the season.
"Nobody we've played this season," Pitino said, "has come with this much size, this much talent and this much experience. North Carolina and Georgia Tech probably have the most overall talent. Now that they're healthy, they're probably believing they can do it."
Of Tech having back all but one starter and most of the reserves from last year's runner-up team, Pitino said: "Their guys have so much experience they're on Social Security. They're getting checks. They've been around. They play like a pro team. They run about 70 percent pick-and-roll. They force traps. They force you to switch. If it was a series, Georgia Tech would probably beat us."
When the Georgia Tech assistant coaches were done looking at film of Louisville, they came to Coach Paul Hewitt and told him the matchup reminded them of something they usually see in the Sweet 16 or regional finals. "I think we're seeded where we should be," he said. "I'm not sure they are. They're more of a two, possibly a one."
Nothing that happened early would lead Hewitt to change his mind, certainly not the way Louisville exploded into the game. In 6-foot-7 Garcia, Dean and 6-4 O'Bannon, the Cardinals have as skilled a threesome as is playing in this tournament. Garcia, from the Bronx, is a young Allan Houston, a threat anywhere inside 25 feet, open or with hands in his face. He and O'Bannon, from Louisville, came out firing like NBA players and pushed Louisville to a 21-8 lead.
And Tech, in addition to trying to come up with some defensive answers, was fighting through injuries to Jarrett Jack (ankle sprain) and Anthony McHenry (bruised hip and back) in what was a familiar theme for the Yellow Jackets all season. Tech was down 45-30 at the half and was lucky the deficit wasn't bigger.
The Florida-Villanova game was treated as something of a preliminary, mostly because the arena was populated with 8,000 or so Louisville fans who made the two-hour drive to see the Cardinals and because the game itself was a free throw shooting snore.
But Villanova might actually represent a dangerous threat to top-seeded North Carolina. Yes, Florida has become something of an afterthought since reaching the NCAA championship game and losing to Michigan State. Since then, it's been one disappointment after another with the Gators, who have lost in the first round two of the last three years and haven't won two tournament games since that 2000 Final Four. Matt Walsh, the junior swingman of much hype, is mostly that. The Gators' best player is 6-9 senior forward David Lee, who will probably be better known the next few years playing in the NBA than he is at Florida. His 20 points and 10 rebounds kept the Gators close, but when he fouled out, the Wildcats pulled away.
The Wildcats also get good guard play, though it's nowhere as explosive as Louisville's. Villanova's Mike Nardi and Kyle Lowry handle the ball. Allan Ray and Randy Foye shoot it (although not well Sunday; together they missed 17 of 23). Even so, Villanova survived and got 21 points and 15 rebounds from 6-10 Jason Fraser who came in for Curtis Sumpter, who was limited to 10 minutes because of an early injury.
Villanova Coach Jay Wright figured the one player his team couldn't do without was Sumpter, a 6-7 forward from Brooklyn. But what his team has in abundance, particularly in the back court, is toughness. Whether Villanova's guards are a match for the Louisville guards is something we'll probably not see in this tournament. But at this point, it's fair to wonder how many teams out there, including the No. 1 seeds, can match the Cardinals' firepower.
