Touching greatness

Given the build-up and the terrific promotional tees, I'd be shocked if The Greatest didn't make some appearance in the Kayefseum of Sunday.

But if he doesn't, it's pretty funny imagining the die-hard boxing historian that bought a ticket and doesn't give two-shits about the Cards leaving the arena disappointed and cursing the city of Louisville.

I think he'll be there. Which is the reason I'm re-linking (here) the post about when I once touched my favorite athlete, idol, and human being of allllllll time in my favorite arena of all time.

The Greatest (t-shirt) of awwwwlllllll time!!!

You buy this shirt and your wardrobe is set for life.

The reversible tee will also set you up for the remaining home games, the white-out v. Pitt and the red-out for senior night v. Providence.

Buy 'em at UofLsports.com or the regular local distributors for all things Cardinal.

It's always a bittersweet day when a man buys the clothes that he'll be buried in.

(a pause to reflect on your and more importantly my mortality)

Okay, back in business. If you're wasting time on a Friday, this video of Ali vs. Cleveland Williams is pure athletic-poetry, Louisville's patron saint at the apex of his powers.

Clint Hurtt stays a Cardinal

I couldn't get a to a computer last night, so I'm a little late registering my excitement that recently-crowned Recruiter of the Year Clint Hurtt has turned down the national champion Auburn Tigers, and will remain on staff with Louisville.

Think about that sentence for a moment.

Charlie Strong was clearly thrilled by his decision, sending out a few tweets in rapid succession (which he rarely does) lauding Hurtt's abilities. My favorite...

With coach hurtt deciding to remain at louisville today, it speaks volumes to where our program is headed and how special the staff is.

The greatest generals need talented lieutenants and Coach Strong has kept his best on board. In an ideal world, a few years from now, if we aren't dodging cannibals in a hellish post-apocalypse, and if we're instead reflecting on the amazing achievements of Louisville and Charlie Strong over bourbon and cigars, the day that UofL retained its top recruiter will be worthy of remembrance.

Toss up

PittBlather is looking ahead to the final games on the Panthers' schedule and evaluating what it takes to secure a #1 seed...

Pitt needs to go 3-1 in the final four games of the season. Not trying to look ahead much, but beating Louisville on Sunday at the Chicken Center is going to be a toss-up at best.

A couple things jump out at me in that blurb...

One, the cut-downs for the Kayefseum are lame. "Chicken Center"? Really, that's all ya got? I at least give some props to UK fans for mining their skulls for creativity; "Ricky's Chicken Shack", "Pitino's Bordello" and so forth.

All are lame; sometimes the lameness stems from hatred, sometimes from ignorance, sometimes from the fact that a team still plays in a hangar built to withstand Soviet missile strikes. I get that.

But Chicken Center? Ouch. I guess I'll resort to salving my wounds with a premier bourbon served 15-yards from my seat.

Two, slowly but surely, the rest of our Big East opponents are starting to realize how serious college basketball is in Derby City. I spend perhaps an inordinate amount of time doing opposition research on the blogs of our opponents, and it's tough to gauge just how prominently Louisville basketball features on their radar.

The best I can tell, Louisville holds standing as "respected pest", a "don't let your guard down or they'll bite ya" sort of opponent.

Our successes, past and present, are still viewed as a flare-up rather than a long-term threat to their blue-blooded bravado.

On Sunday, the Cards have an ideal chance to upset the established order and show that the road to Big East glory has to go through Louisville first.

Like clockwork

Here's the Big East standings...

#6 Pittsburgh	12-2	--	.857	24-3	.889	L1
#9 Notre Dame	11-4	1.5	.733	22-5	.815	W1
#16 Louisville	10-5	2.5	.667	21-7	.750	W2
#25 St. John's	10-5	2.5	.667	18-9	.667	W5
#11 Georgetown	10-6	3	.625	21-7	.750	L1
#20 Syracuse	10-6	3	.625	23-6	.793	W3
#14 Villanova	9-6	3.5	.600	21-7	.750	L1
Cincinnati	9-6	3.5	.600	22-6	.786	W3
#15 Connecticut	8-6	4	.571	20-6	.769	L1

(Hat tip and apology for what is surely a copyright violation: ESPN)

Now, I don't pretend to understand the logic of the Selection Committee. I still remember vividly the 05-06 season when a consensus Top 10 Louisville team was "awarded" a #4 seed. But for this season, for a conference that's getting 10+ teams in the Dance, I foresee the seedings, for the most part, to reflect precisely how the team finished in the Big East.

Pitt a #1, ND # 2, whomever finishes third a #3 and so forth....

I think that math holds up until the 7th Big East team or so, at which point the remaining teams will shuffle in close behind.

Performance in the Big East tournament is the wild card, of course. But for an unscientific endeavor, I think the Cards are in fine position to still seize a #3 seed with a nice road to the Sweet 16.

The Furies of March shall decide.

Feelin' grounded

The goings-on of the NASA space program have drifted so far from the mainstream of ordinary Americans that most don't yet realize the days of manned US ventures into the cosmos are at an end. At least temporarily, and likely for good.

The shuttle Discovery will launch for the final time this afternoon at 4:50. Afterwards, it'll be decommissioned to the Smithsonian, and similar fates await the remaining craft over the next few months. The Constellation program, long-viewed as the future of space flight for the U.S., was cut in the last federal budget. Soon, the only way for American astronauts to reach the International Space Station, or any orbit at all for that matter, will be to piggyback rides on Russian or Chinese spaceflights.

Not only is it a blow to U.S. prestige, but it's also a sad day for space-geeks like me, and furthermore, any from the previous generation that were inspired by our country's once bold quest out into the universe.

As T.S. Eliot once wrote: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Apparently we will cease; and that place is located between "broke" and "disinterested". Thud.

But alas, back to that other rotating sphere of supreme importance, the roundball....

* Pitt, the king of this season's Big East and our next foe, has shown some chinks in his armor over the last month. Specifically, this article highlights the Panther woes with defending the paint of late. The Cards, on paper anyways, aren't the ideal team to exploit this weakness. But we can make them honest.

Since pressing the perimeter on defense is the generic template for beating Louisville, if TJ, Rock, and Gorgui can slam a few home early in the game on Sunday, that would spring Kuric, Knowles, Smith and (gulp) Marra with the foot of space they need to square up.

The Cards' inside-game is similar to the Green Bay Packers' running game pre-Super Bowl. Neither needs it to win, but each needs the opponent to respect it just enough to open up the other avenues for what each does well. Did I keep all my grammar-tenses straight? (Rick, check me on that)

* Louisville, coming off a 55-point explosion, probably shouldn't be hurling stones at an opponent's offensive productivity, but what the hell. Here's another article on how Pitt has struggled to score of late, seeing its per game average dip almost 19 points over the last 7 games.

Much of that has to do with leading scorer Ashton Gibbs missing games due to injury, but even upon his return, they haven't found the same chemistry.

* Georgetown took a whuppin' last night from Cincinnati, if there was any doubt left, the Bearcats officially stamped their ticket for the tourney. It also opens the door for the Cards to continue climbing the Big East ladder and perhaps secure a 3 seed for the Big Dance.

Emails to theHoff

Note: theHoff is a special guest contributor to Cardinal Laws. And now he answers our emails.

With the potential of an NBA team coming to our great city, what are the possible names? I know Louisville used to be home to the Kentucky Colonels, but that seems outdated to me. Some people think if the Kings relocate, throwing Kentucky in front of that would be a wise choice. I still don't like it. The Hornets already have the fleur de lis in their logo so it's a natural, but I don't know how much of a connection a 'hornet' has with Kentucky. Thoughts?

First off, I wouldn't put any more thought into it. Second, the Hornets would have just as much of a connection to us as it does New Orleans. Get it out of your system Louisville. The NBA ain't comin'.

How do I tell my wife that after a couple glasses of wine in an evening she snores so loud that I can't sleep??

You keep your mouth shut, good sir! Nothing good can come of telling her that she's less than perfect. Everyone snores more or less. Some more, or more loudly than others. I know I snore. I mean, I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty certain with the schnozz that I'm sporting it's quite likely. Of course the drunken snore is the worst because they are basically impossible to shake out of someone. Usually a sharp elbow to the back will subdue the noise long enough to let you get some sleep, but when you have Ms. Wino next to you chainsawing away it can be rough. You are in a real predicament. If the wine (drinking) is a direct cause of the snoring that means your first thought would be to cut down on the booze. Not mine. I think the real problem is that you are not lubricated enough to pass out (it's not passing out if you mean to fall asleep) before her. Foam earplugs are cheap too.

I bought my Lady Gaga tickets for Yum! Did you get yours?

Nah. That's one weird chick (I think). As I understand it her followers are all about as crazy as her, so I'll probably try to post up somewhere near the Arena so I can people watch all night. I take great joy in drinking alone and commenting to myself how weird other people are, that's normal, right? It'll be interesting. Also interesting is the Google auto fill search thing.... you know, where it guesses at what you're searching for based on other searches. Well once you get past "Lady Gaga _" the second choice is "Lady Gaga hermaphrodite". On second thought, I might just go to Checks and do karaoke that night. Gross.

Why do they make single ply toilet paper? I don't get it. You can't even think about using that stuff without even double or tripling up!

I agree wholeheartedly. That shit isn't worth the shit you're wiping! Any time I'm at someone's house and they have single ply I get extremely pissed and judgmental. The first thought is that you have to be one broke mother f#$k to buy that stuff. Everyone knows you can't use it without spooling out an arm's length worth of squares. Then you have to ball that shit up (since folding along the lines basically causes it to fall apart). If I safely navigate the shit storm with the single ply then I move to recon mode. I feel like someone who has single ply probably never uses that crap. I always think I'll look in the cabinet and find a stash of double ply, plush, scented, comfy TP that is there for their own private use. Kinda like, a "let the peasants use the single" attitude. If that does ever happen. I'm top-shelfing them (look it up). Done, and done.

Glad to be putting out all these fires. Keep those emails coming.

How to program Marra missiles

Bobby Valvano -- and Rick Pitino by extension -- think they have Mike Marra figured out. If he goes into the game determined to break out of his shooting funk and turn it all around with his next shot, those scud missiles he launches toward the basket can end up just about anywhere. But if he can stop worrying about it completely, and thus stop overthinking his shot, and instead concentrate on defense those shots start to fall on occasion.

Marra made several impressive defensive plays last night (agreed Mr. Red, there's no way that block was goaltending). Along the way sure enough, Marra knocked down three three-pointers, maybe his best shooting performance since the first UConn game. And I would agree with the above line of thought in that the way he shot those shots, they almost seemed like afterthoughts. Which, for Marra, is good. Usually.

Still, man when he's off... watch out front row.

Cards win Jersey style, 55-37

The final score may have more closely resembled that of a high school JV game, but I'm not one to complain about 18-point road victories. In the end, the Cards notched the all-important 10th conference win, are still walking the path towards the double-bye in Madison Square Gardens (which I covet, I don't care what anyone says) and displayed the kind of tenacious defense that wins games in March. All in all, not a bad evening.

There were some other interesting developments in the game. Foremost, Pitino doesn't seem to think Elisha Justice is ready for the tourney, as Preston Knowles assumed point guard duties for long stretches of a time when Siva was out. Justice did play, only in the final minute and a half, in a contest where if Pitino is serious about Justice as our backup point, this was the time to get him extra reps. Since he didn't, it appears that Knowles is officially our 40-minute man. Barring foul trouble, Pitino wants to get every ounce out of his senior leader. It's the shrewd move.

TJ (fingers crossed fingers crossed fingers crossed) appears to have finally turned the corner. His 8-4-5 stat line maybe doesn't jump out at you, but it's the style of play he's exhibiting, the hustle and energy that is the most promising. Now if we can only get a little more touch on that baby-hook, we may really have something.

In the civil war between Cards fans about what to do with Mike Marra, his play gave reasons for both camps to entrench themselves. 9 points and 3 steals and (what I thought) was a nice athletic block at the rim in 16 minutes of play is enough productivity for me, but he couldn't complete the effort without the requisite airball from long-range (maybe the worst yet) and bricked his only two free throws. The not-so-great debate continues.

Siva struggled quite a bit. His shot was completely off and he struggled to run the fastbreak to take advantage of Rutgers numerous turnovers.

Chris Smith also doesn't seem to be playing with total confidence, the kind he displayed so often earlier in the season. I lost count of how many open looks he passed on last night.

But, I'll take it. And I'm really not even that concerned about the Cardinals' own offensive struggles; Pitino sensed a win with about 7 minutes left and essentially took the air out of the ball, the Cards took the clock down on every possession content with the W and eager to get back in the gym with several days to prepare for the Pitt Panthers.

Yep, you guessed it, it's another big one.

Cards over Rutgers 55-37

It wasn't pretty, but we got the win.

Preston Knowles keyed the victory with 14 points, 8 rebounds and 5 steals. Kyle Kuric had 11 points and 7 rebounds, and Mike Marra added 9 points and -- most impressively -- 3 steals. Those three guys hit 10 three-pointers between them.

10 team steals and forcing the other team into 18 turnovers? Good. Outrebounding Rutgers 34-30? Good. Only 10 assists for the entire game? Well, we scored 55 points, what do you expect?

At the end of the day, we won by 18 and held a Big East opponent to 37 points for the game. Heading into postseason play, that's music to my ears.

Stats here.

With the victory, the Cards win the fourth straight of Pitino's three-game sets. They have now eclipsed last year's win total, are 21-7 and 10-5 in the Big East. Tied with Georgetown for third place with three to play.

And next up is Pitt.

Go Cards.

Anyone else worried...

...about how Terrence Jennings is going to respond tonight after riding the pine for much of the last game against UConn? I was happy after the game to chock it up to TJ being in foul trouble, but Pitino's after-game comments, that he went with Gorgui Dieng rather than TJ because he was playing better, could signal yet another motivational tactic the head coach is playing with our up and down center. The fact is Gorgui did play better (and that's not really a slight against TJ), but I don't know that it warranted allowing Jennings only 11 minutes for the game especially after he provided our early offense. The Cards guy at Straightpinkie (I think it's Miller) has a theory that TJ plays better when he's not worried about Gorgui or someone else replacing him; if that's true, then this latest tactic could be a mistake.

No Cards fan was harder on Terrence Jennings than I was early in the season. But he's been a big part of our success in the Big East and has keyed several critical wins over higher-ranked opponents. We're going to need him down the stretch.

Rutgers preview from the Newark Star Ledger

Available here. They highlight the Scarlet Knights' penchant for turnovers and the Cardinals need to hit the glass.

Also, they're none too pleased up there with what's perceived as repeated shoddy treatment from the officials when going up against the "big names" in the Big East. What's worse, most of the complaints appear to be valid, so if the Big East is listening and starts to tailor itself against the cries of favoritism, the Cards better beware to avoid early foul trouble tonight.

Programming note

There are a few things you should know about Mr. Red and me that help explain our philosophy to this web site. We both hate change. We're both Terminator die-hard fans who think that whole skynet thing could actually happen, so we're terrified of new technology. And, stylistically speaking, we prefer to keep the look of Cardinal Laws simple and uncluttered, with the exception of those few ads that have made us filthy rich.

However, there are some new features to the web site that we added over the weekend and wanted to bring to your attention. But don't worry... unlike the CJ, which unveiled its new online video format on college football signing day and subsequently froze the whole web site during its most crucial run time, we don't expect any interruptions to our own programmi...

Sorry, minor glitch. Are we back on now? Okay, here are the features, all are located at the bottom of Cardinal Laws and we hope you will find them moderately useful:

Links -- First new feature is a simple list of web links, organized by sport, that include schedules, ESPN pages, Big East conference pages, and the Louisville athletic department's web page per sport. As of now it's just men's basketball, women's basketball, and football, but we'll likely mess with it as things move along.

"Recent popular posts" -- A listing of the top ten "most popular" posts from the past thirty days, popularity in this case determined by the number of clicks to the specific post link. A bit of background on how this works -- the way people click on these posts usually is one of two ways: 1) click on a specific post from the CL homepage usually to add your comment or to read the comments of others, or 2) randomly come across a post during a Google keyword search. The latter is the reason that you'll see "Adieu" up there despite being a year old -- since it includes 53 in-text links (pretty sure that's the record for this site), it tends to attract more search engine traffic. Though I'm pretty sure the majority of that traffic is traceable to just one of those links, the picture of the Ladybirds that I dug up from last year (a shout out to all you horndogs out there, thank you for patronizing Cardinal Laws). Anywho, this might be our most interesting new feature, if for no other reason than to note on occasion the bizarre and illogical choice-making that goes on on the web vis-a-vis our web site.

Blog Archive -- Every single post that ever appeared during the storied year-and-a-half history of Cardinal Laws is now archived and available, organized by week and year. Clearly this will be of most benefit to scholars. But hey, if you ever get bored, one interesting activity you can now do is click on a random week from 2009 and remind yourself of how screwed up things really used to be. Take (and this was selected at random) Oct. 25 - Nov. 1 of '09, for example. That week of post titles includes, "Kragthorpe Kwote of the Day," "Careful not to step in all the catshit," "A bruising, battering bearcat beatdown," "Dungy me," "Can a coach be cursed?" "We howlin and s*#$" "Sour grapes," "We are... go?" and my personal favorite, "Obligatory football post." There, don't you feel better? What was the point of that again? Oh yeah, enjoy the archive.

That is all. Now please start clicking on "Forget Football, TIM HENDERSON is starting against Depaul" over-and-over to ensure that it continues its reign as most popular post. (The hell?)