Breathe a big sigh of relief.
The University of Louisville men's basketball team picked up their fifteenth win of the season on Saturday night, knocking off the Pitt Panthers on the road 73-62.
The Cardinals and Panthers came into the game as two of the three traditional Big East powers really struggling right now (Villanova being the third, currently at 10-10 overall this year). With the win, Louisville improves to 15-5 overall, but it's only their third win over their last eight, and they are still sub-.500 at 3-4 in conference play. The loss drops the Panthers to 11-9 overall, and they are still the lone winless Big East team, dropping to 0-7 in league play.
Kyle Kuric made his return from a two-game stint on the bench nursing a bad ankle, and led the Cardinals with a game high 21 points off of Pitino's bench. Three Cardinal starters scored in double figures on the night: forward Chane Behanan with 19, center Gorgui Dieng with 13, and guard Russ Smith with 11.
Three Panthers scored double-digits against Louisville: forward Nasir Robinson had a dozen, while guards Ashton Gibbs and Lamar Patterson led the Panthers with 14 a piece.
The stat of the night, in this win, is the exact opposite found in the bulk of the Cardinals' losses: free throw shooting. Louisville got to the line for twenty attempts for the first time in two weeks, while sending the Panthers to the charity stripe for just six attempts all game. Compounding the success for Louisville and the problem for Pitt, the Cards went 15 for 20 at 75% on freebies, while Pitt shot 1 for 6, a shade under 17%.
In Louisville's 12-0 start to the season, they averaged just under 23 and a half free attempts a game (23.4). In four conference losses, Louisville has stepped to the line just over 18 times (18.3). That stat would be skewed even further if not for the overtime contest with Notre Dame where Notre Dame attempted 29, and Louisville attempted 27 free throws (would drop the conference average to 15.3 attempts a game).
Louisville looks to put together it's first win streak of 2012 (they have won-then-lost ever since we said goodbye to 2011) against Villanova tonight at home. Villanova isn't on a slide as bad as Pittsburgh in the Big East, but they are on one comparable to Louisville's. The game is at 7:00pm tonight at the KFC Yum! Center, and can be seen on ESPN.
Go CARDS!
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