Quote of the Day (and congrats Butler Bulldogs)

"How good was [Brad] Stevens' coaching job this year? I covered opener at Louisville, and Butler looked sub-NIT. By March, Final Four-bound.

-- Pat Forde

Some time in the wilderness

I'm outta the country beginning at 6:00am tomorrow, when the Mrs. and I will take off to explore the wilds of Turkey. Obligingly, the Cards did me a solid by bowing out in the first round, therefore saving me the trouble of wandering about the streets of Istanbul at 3:00am in search of an Internet Cafe. So, um, thanks for that.

Just like Rick's annual post-season trip to Miami, bloggers need to recharge their batteries and regain some perspective as well.

So I'll try to wash the staining words of "first round exit" from my body in the cleansing waters of the Mediterranean, meditate on the Cardinals' future in the caves of the early-Christian hermits, and attempt to regain my warrior-spirit by walking the battlefields of the ancient Trojan War.

But if the Cats win it all, I probably won't be coming back. 

Mr. Black will be at the helm until April 8, and will no doubt be thrilling you with news about the Lady Cards march to the Final Four, spring practice for the football team as Teddy Bridgewater dominates, and live-blogging the action when the officials reevaluate the Faried foul from the Morehead State game and decide to replay the final possession. I hope, I hope, I hope...

But I'll be abroad with my bride, waiting for the most romantic moment possible to spoil by asking if we can go check the scores of the Elite Eight games.

I'll catch ya on the flip side.

Go Cards.

Strong goes back to work...

...for Cards fans, not a moment too soon. Pictures from CJ.

NFL lockout; when greed killed the game

What do you want from me? I can't break down our next opponent, and while I'm thoroughly cheering for the Lady Cards as they march into the Sweet 16 and have also ordered tickets for admission onto the Bellarmine bandwagon, I can't really speak that intelligently on either subject.

But one of my non-UofL passions is NFL football (and wife and family, blah blah blah), so of course I'm glued and grandstanding while our country's most popular and profitable sport flirts with slaying its golden goose.

For the record, I side with the players' union when the chips are down, but I acknowledge that the whole thing is quickly becoming farcical...

When Adrian Peterson is comparing the plight of NFL players to modern-day slaves (AP made 10.72 million dollars last season), and when Jerry Jones (billionaire, received 350 mil in public money to build "Jerry World") is doing his best "mob boss" intimidation techniques during negotiations, I'm quickly losing faith that we'll see the NFL next season. Cooler heads cannot prevail in a room full of morons.

And this is depressing on about 17 different levels. For better or worse, even if one isn't a football fan, the NFL is one of the most successful and profitable business models remaining in our country. It's one of the things this country can still claim to get "right".

So when the whole thing is being suffocated by lawyering and greed, you can't help but throw your hands up and make some larger parallels about who we are and where we're going as a nation.

The lockout is growing worse. The owners are slowly but surely approving new kickoff rules that will increase the number of touchbacks, largely because many injuries happen during special teams play, thus providing themselves "cover" on the topic of player safety when pushing for the 18-game season that the owners crave most of all.

The players are stuck in the corner, on the one hand, emphasizing player safety is one of their trump cards, on the other, most aren't very happy about modifying the game they love just to add two more games that they don't want to play, and don't feel the game needs.

Josh Cribbs and Devin Hester, the game's most dangerous return men, have already voiced their unhappiness about the change to the kickoff rule.

And I agree. Petty bickering amongst the semi-rich versus the ultra-rich about how to split their spoils is one thing. But changing the game itself as a bargaining chip on the negotiating table takes it to another level.

I just threw up a little in my mouth. But I don't think I'm the only NFL fan feeling nauseated, and that should be the biggest concern for all parties.

If they dilly much longer, when camps and practices are soon canceled, the NFL will have crossed the Rubicon.

Instead of revenue sharing, the biggest concern of the next collective bargaining summit will be how to get asses back into the seats.

Good point

Coach Pitino gave some very interesting, and frankly, reassuring local interviews today in which he explained his reasons for wanting to do TV analysis after the loss (and for the record, he did fly home with the team, contrary to some reports). He said he simply wasn't ready to let go of college basketball for the season, not yet. Nor was he as down as he had been in the past since he was proud of his team's effort all season.

Say what you want about the man, but he could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves. I came away impressed, and just a tad, tad more at peace. He also made a good point when he said...

I was very disappointed for Preston, who had a season ending injury. Even if we didn’t lose I’m not sure we could have beaten Richmond without Preston Knowles.

True enough. With Preston slated for surgery Friday and looking at 8-12 weeks of rehab, the Cards' hopes for a deep tourney run ended the moment he went down. Sure, it would have been nice to beat Morehead State, perhaps to survive the first weekend, but we weren't going to make any real noise in this Dance without Preston.

Big East

If I were writing a definition for Merriam-Webster, here would be my definition for BEST CONFERENCE...

BEST CONFERENCE (buh-est-con-fur-ents; noun): meaning the conference in college basketball with the largest number of quality teams in it that play against one another.

Period.

The backlash against the Big East and its dismal showing in this year's tournament is approaching absurdity. Note to the haters, the fact that Louisville and Notre Dame lost does not instantly make Alabama or Va Tech or Oklahoma State any better.

The criticism that's currently being hardened into conventional wisdom is that the Big East is simply a league with a lot of "decent" teams but no cream to its crop.

But is that true?

In the last decade the Big East, including teams that now play in the Big East post-merger, have been repped in the Final Four with greater frequency than any other conference. 

2010 West Virginia, 2009 Villanova and UConn, 2007 Georgetown,  2005 Louisville, 2004 UConn (nat'l champions), 2003 Syracuse (nat'l champions) and Marquette.

That's 8 total Final Four appearances. 

Compare that to the other Final Four appearances by major conferences over the same time period...

Big 12: 4

Big 10: 5

ACC: 5

SEC: 3

PAC 10: 3

(Also worth noting, that of the 8 Final Fours for the Big East, you'll see the names of 7 different schools. The most any other major conference can boast is 3 from the ACC).

So if the Big East is being "exposed" as annual underachievers, who then is the conference that's being "underexposed", the major conference that doesn't get enough respect?

Crickets. Because there's not one. If there's an argument to be made, it's for the mid-majors, a term that's slowly losing its meaning. It's the Butlers, George Masons, Morehead States and Richmonds that have proven they can go toe to toe with anyone in the country. 

I buy that, I get that, I acknowledge that, that's where the parity comes from. But that doesn't seem to be where most of the Big East criticism comes from. It's coming from the fans of teams in the other "majors" with an axe to grind, that so quickly forget, or completely ignore, the ineptitude of much of their own conference.

My explanation for the dismal performance for the Big East this year? A fucking basketball tournament happened.

Louisville lost on a buzzer beater, Pitt got hosed by the refs, Georgetown got run out of the gym by a hot team, Villanova fought hard and lost a nailbiter.

In other words, the things that happen in March when the ball is tipped. The Big East teams, largely, didn't get the jobs done thus far and got the short end of the stick. But that doesn't mean that the sticks of the other major conferences suddenly grow any bigger.

Rant over.

Quote of the Day

You ever feel cursed, Coach? Like, no matter what, inside your heart you feel that you're gonna lose. Like something's hanging over you, following you like a witch or a demon that just... I feel like that all the time. Even when things are going good. When we're winnin', it's there. And when we're losin', it's there.

-Mike Winchell, from "Friday Night Lights", summing up my feelings nicely. I'm not over it.

Call them loveable, call them exciting, but you can't call them clutch

From Tom Heiser's blog, a reminder of what slipped through our fingers in the final three losses...

A five-point lead with a minute to play in Morgantown; a four-point lead with 1:15 to play against UConn; a four-point lead with 42 seconds to play against Morehead State. All of these nightmarish endings have a hagridden theme: the other guys made the plays.

RIP, Drew Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill

I don't know what you did in high school, you may have wasted it at parties or talking to girls. But I spent most of mine in a buddies basement playing video games and watching HBO's "OZ" under the influence of, um, sandwiches.

And no game and no player has a place in my addled-memory like Tecmo Bowl's version of Drew Hill.

While I responsibly tried to craft my Tecmo teams around a balanced offense and a speedy secondary, my host would garishly gameplan around one player, the incomparable Drew Hill of the Houston Oilers.

He was Randy Moss before there was a Randy Moss. And my host would run one play, over and over, the fly pattern to Hill where he would drop Warren Moon back 40 yards to evade the rush before unleashing the pigskin for a seemingly impossible 90-yard completion to Drew Hill in the endzone.

One out of five times, it worked every time. And that was usually enough. My buddy even had a little "Drew Hiiiiiiiiiilll Dance" that he broke out every time Hill broke loose, that amazingly never drew a flag and is forever cemented in my memory.

Drew Hill passed away over the weekend at the age of 54 after suffering a series of strokes. By all accounts, he was a good man and a damn fine football player. I don't want to diminish the real-life sadness.

So I hope it's OK that the mere mention of his name still brings a laugh and a smile, that the ripples of his legacy extend as far as a hazy Audubon Park basement from over a decade ago.

Rest in peace, Drew. May my defenders be forever at your feet, and the ball securely in your hands.

My advice to you, start drinking heavily

Even though thinking about the UofL-Morehead game still turns my stomach to knots, it didn't prevent me from soaking up as much basketball as I could over the weekend. My bracket didn't survive, but I had a great time watching nonetheless. If UofL fans are turned off of college bball right now (Mrs. Red won't watch a single more game) I think they're punishing themselves too severely and depriving themselves of some great basketball. So here's some non-UofL thoughts on the weekend that was...

* Pitt got screwed. I can't believe there hasn't been more of an uproar. I would have been upset if that call went against my team during the first half of an exhibition game, so to have their season end on a bogus call 90 feet from the basket redefines heartbreak.

There really needs to be a meeting of all the refs before the tournament so they can all get on the same page about what they're gonna emphasize and what they're not. Perhaps Butler may have won in OT anyways, who knows, but the contest should have been decided by the players. This one was decided by the refs, and that makes me sick.

Pitt now holds the crown for most cursed and pained program to suffer March's Furies, and it's not even close.

* I hate Charles Barkley as a March Madness analyst. There I said it, someone had to. Maybe I'm just too irritable right now, my Cards scarcely got off the plane in Denver, so yes, even newborn puppies are grating my nerves. But I still hold firm in my belief that a little bit of Sir Charles the Overexposed goes a long way.

His desire to be a contrarian is over the top, case in point, his praise of Bruce Pearl as a great coach and a great person. His knowledge of the teams is spotty, and his predictions on who wins are based solely on his own stereotypes about where the best athletes come from, namely, the south.

I won't knock his knocking of the Big East, since his bias there makes him look like Nostradamus right now, but I do hate him calling it the Big Least, using the terminology of second-rate message boarders isn't really funny or professional. But speaking of the Big East... 

* The weekend for the Big East conference approached Hindenburg Level of disaster. I won't defend the poor showing, except to point out that since 4 Big East teams played one another in the first weekend, its showing in the Sweet 16 is mathematically reflected as 2/9 rather than 2/11. Beyond that though, the defense rests your honor.

The call-in shows and message boards are being lit up with those relishing in the "exposure" of the overrated Big East. It seems to me this misses the point. The Big East, by any rational analysis, is still the best, deepest, and most competitive league by far. All 11 teams that got in deserved their bids.

But what's really being proven is that playing in a superconference does little to improve your chances of playing deep into March, and in fact may hinder them. I still love playing in the conference because it guarantees a number of high profile matchups, TV exposure, and the excitement of playing in many of college basketball's historic venues. But I don't think the rigors of the season "toughen" a team, and the notion that the Big East teams will be battle-tested for the tourney has been proven bogus.

So really, if you want to hate on the Big East, I understand. But rather than calling it "overrated", my retort to any hyperbolic praise the conference receives in the future would be the simple, "So what?".

* The best game I've watched thus far was Washington-UNC, both teams playing up-tempo, trading baskets for 40 minutes. It was a beautiful game.

But it had one of the strangest endings when, trailing by three, a Huskie chucked up a half-courter for some reason (trying to draw a foul maybe?) even though plenty of time remained to get a better shot off. The ball then luckily careened out of bounds off a UNC player, setting them up for one final chance. The refs refused to go to the cameras to add more time back on the clock (should have been 1.4 seconds, plenty of time) and Washington couldn't get off a three-pointer, luckily for the Tarheels since Hensen appeared to goaltend the shot Gorgui-style as the buzzer sounded.

There were tons of great games in the first weekend, but it had to set a record for the sheer bizzareness of many of the endings.

* Next year I'm filling out a Costanza Bracket, and simply doing the opposite of whatever I think, or want to happen. I don't think I've watched a game yet where my desired outcome has come to pass.

Don't ask him about his business

Earlier yesterday, when Rick Pitino was introduced as a special-analyst for CBS, I had a visceral reaction and fought the urge to change the channel if not throw something at it.

It was emotional, not logical, my heart momentarily trumping my brain, but still. That's not a good thing.

Whether he's auditioning for a new gig, getting his mind off the loss, or trying to turn the page of his national profile from the Sypher scandal, there weren't many Louisville fans watching that didn't have some fairly strong feelings about his chipper TV appearance with the corpse of the 2010-11 Cardinal bird still warm.

And I didn't change the channel, I listened, and just like everyone expected he would be, Pitino's a natural presence on TV. He seemed happy, not looking at all like a man in the depths of despair after a disappointing loss (and honestly, who better to break down the matchups for UK, WVU, and Morehead State since all three dealt his team staggering defeats this season?).

The question is on the table because Rick constantly puts it on the table; is it time for UofL and Rick Pitino to part ways?

Even though these Cardinals earned a reputation as one of the most beloved squads in memory, I still don't believe the vibes around the program are very good right now. And to put a finer point on it, I think it's that Louisville fans are weary of carrying the baggage that comes with having Rick Pitino as head coach.

The word "firing" is a nonstarter, Jurich never will nor has Pitino done anything to remotely deserve it, he's coming off what was generally regarded as some of his best coaching. But getting the axe isn't the only way for the guard to change. Sometimes a program just needs a new transfusion of blood, a lungful of fresh air.

If Pitino decides to hang em up, it seems like a natural time to do so. His assistants and confidantes at Louisville have largely moved on, or seem to be in the process of. There's the stellar recruiting class next year to consider, obviously, but such will always be the case with a coaching change. You get the right next guy, he holds it together as best he can or sees fit, and then begins making his own stamp on a program.

Rick Pitino has accomplished much, and could leave Louisville with a proud legacy if he so chooses. Pitino brought the Cards back from the brink of irrelevancy after the late-stage Denny Crum years, he ushered us into the premier basketball conference in the nation and promptly established our credibility by sweeping Big East regular season and tournament titles. He cemented his own place in basketball history by taking a third team to the Final Four. He helped spearhead the groundbreaking of the new arena, a monumental moment that never could have happened without the force of his personality. And he made the place home with some electrifying wins that pumped life into the new building.

So when you hear Rick wearily talking about coaching too long, when he raises eyebrows by mentioning how this last group of Cardinals would be the perfect kind of team to go out on, and when you see how comfortable and carefree he looks in the analyst booth, you do have to wonder.

It's not so much as a call for a change as it is simply asking a question.

Has the time finally come?