Cardinals get Pitino 500th win over Thundering Herd
After more than two weeks since their last victory, the Cardinals finally got their head coach Rick Pitino into an exclusive club: 500 wins.
Earl Clark paced the Cardinals with 23 points and Louisville slipped past Marshall 85-75, giving Pitino his 500th coaching victory. Louisville improves to 6-3, while Marshall drops to 5-3 on the season.
Deadlocked at 37 going into halftime, the Cardinals turned up their defensive tone coming out of the locker room. With a stifling press , Louisville held Marshall close to seven minutes without a field goal and used a 20-3 run in that span to balloon their lead to 66-49.
The Thundering Herd refused to go away quietly, responding with a 10-0 run and solving the Cardinals’ press, cutting the lead seven. David Caracter, who returned from a one-game suspension for violating team rules, put the Cardinals on his back and carried Louisville the rest of the way, netting six straight points. Marshall had no answer inside for Caracter, who finished with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 4 blocks.
The defense for Louisville force the Thundering Herd to cough up the basketball 17 times, and blocked 13 shots, a season high for the Cardinals.
Markel Humphrey notched a double-double, scoring a game-high 24 points and pulling down 10 rebounds. Mark Dorris chipped in with 21 points and Tirrell Baines added 18 points, going 10-10 from the free throw line.
The Cardinals notched their first win since Dec.1st, a 47-44 squeaker over Miami-Ohio. Louisville will have three more out-of-conference games before they venture into Big East play on New Year’s Day against Cincinnati.
It’s hasn’t been all peaches and cream for Louisville so far on the young 2007-2008. An impressive 20-point pasting at UNLV. A difficult three games in four nights stretch that saw BYU spoil a potential matchup against North Carolina. Two straight losses to Dayton and Purdue have made for a bumpy ride. Good news is, there’s still time to get all the kinks worked out before heading into conferece play.
Pitino has had to do some juggling of his lineup early on. David Caracter still has some growing up to do, and his maturity is a must. He presents a dominant low post threat that Louisville will need come March.
The return of senior center David Padgett is highly unlikey, due to a broken kneecap. He’s their best player, the straw that stirs the drink for Louisville. Collectively it’ll take a huge effort to replace him and the Cardinals call ill afford to take nights off. Juan Palacios has battled the injury bug and he’s struggling to regain last season’s form. In turn, Pitino has had to use Edgar Sosa off the bench, rather than in the starting lineup and Sosa has struggled to adjust coming off the bench, rather than starting, as he did a year ago.
Next up for Louisville, they’ll welcome the New Mexico St. Aggies into Freedom Hall on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m.
Tags: louisville cardinals, Marshall Thundering Herd, NCAA Men's basketball, Rick Pitino