Finally.
A few quick notes from last night’s huge win over #15 Louisville:
-In an otherwise great year for Rick Pitino, his former team has now gotten the best of him twice. Ricky Ledo is not walking through that door.
-For a lot of this game, this was one of those games where I felt like we should have been down by much more than we were. The offense had some rough patches, including a long scoreless stretch in the second half. The defense was quietly and very surprisingly stifling, however, as the Friars got away with the offensive lulls without taking much damage. The stat that jumped out to me the most was the fact that Louisville, the best three point shooting team in the Big East, did not hit a single three pointer in the second half. After a stretch of games where even below average three point shooting teams were shooting the lights out against us, this was particularly refreshing to see.
-On the other side of the ball, the Friars hit 40% of their threes, well above the season average. I wouldn’t get used to it, because this team is not exactly stocked with sharpshooters, but this game was largely won and lost at the three point arc.
-Bilal Dixon is a big concern going forward. Definitely a low point in the Friar lineup with 0 points in only 15 minutes. He’s going to need to get straightened out if we want to see more Big East wins, because we’re not going to have many great three point shooting games.
-The crowd was a big part of this win. There were 2 reasons for this. First, it was the first game back from winter break, and really the first “important” game this season for which students were on campus. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, 5 pm is really the perfect time for a Saturday game. It’s late enough to drink before hand but it’s early enough that you don’t lose the all-important “this game is going to cut into my drinking time” demographic. Bob Driscoll: Schedule more 5 pm Saturday games.
-Also, for those of you not on Twitter, I’d like to once again point out that I predicted this win right here on this blog back in November. I’m awesome.
If you want a full, detailed recap of this game, I suggest you go check out Friar Basketball’s take on the game, which pretty much covers all the relevant analysis.
-SM
