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This story on the Louisville Cardinals’ collapse against the Duke Blue Devils begins in a soup kitchen.
For 10 years as a once-a-week volunteer and then for four years as a five-day-a-week assistant manager, I spent time at a Catholic Seattle soup kitchen. At a place of ministry, the people who guide you aren’t bosses. They are ministers or shepherds or pastors, or simply brothers or sisters. Whatever label you want to use, I worked for the manager of the soup kitchen, one of my main mentors in my college years and a formative influence in my life.
This woman walked with me and worked with me as we saw people struggle to find consistency in their lives. We saw the stories of the people we served — we noticed how these stories unfolded. We interacted with this community at the dinner table after putting out a meal. We would make the rounds, check in on how our “regulars” were doing, but put just as much effort and attention into a first-time visitor who might have been embarrassed to ask for a free meal. We saw people at their lowest points, but we also saw people adjust to the reality of their situation and come to terms with the realization that it’s not a weakness, a sin, or a character flaw to get a free meal in a public setting.
This soup kitchen was a place where people confronted the harsh reality of life but also learned to find comfort in life’s limitations — not approval of being poor, but understanding that life is a very complicated thing.
My mentor impressed upon me the importance of being able to adjust — structurally, psychologically and spiritually — to life’s complexities and hardships. She compared the process of developing spiritual wisdom to a continuous encounter with a boomerang.
“Life keeps coming back at us with the same lesson, over and over again,” she was fond of saying. “This lesson will continue to come back to us until we are finally ready to understand it and apply what it is meant to teach us.”
This is Chris Mack’s world.
This is the reality of Louisville basketball after losing a 59-36 lead in the final 9:10 of regulation, and booting away a 64-52 lead in the final 4:40 against a relentless Duke team which finally found the Cardinals’ weak spot: handling full-court pressure.
The best reason for Louisville fans to feel confident entering the final 9:10 of regulation time on Tuesday night was that the Cardinals had just endured a wrenching game on Saturday at Florida State. Louisville led by 10 midway through the second half and had the game going in the direction it wanted, but weak ballhandling and a flood of turnovers — 23 before the day was done — killed UL and facilitated a Seminole comeback which FSU completed in overtime, en route to an 80-75 win over the Cards.
The loss stung, but Mack — whose 2018 Xavier team had lost to Leonard Hamilton and the Noles in a very similar fashion in the NCAA Tournament — had a chance to teach his team how to handle late-game defensive pressure from an opponent.
Surely, with that memory fresh in mind, the Cardinals would get it right this time… or at least, not fail as spectacularly as they did at Florida State.
Not only did they fail again, but they failed twice as badly. Coughing up a 10-point lead late in the second half is one thing; this was a 23-point lead UL surrendered, and it was at home in the KFC Yum! Center.
2018 with Xavier. This past Saturday against FSU. Tuesday against Duke. The boomerang in Chris Mack’s coaching career could not be more obvious: Late-game ballhandling and late-game failures to successfully attack extended defensive pressure are the crises Mack must address.
There’s a reason Louisville’s last national championship team had Peyton Siva and Russ Smith, two wizards with the ball who could withstand enormous defensive pressure and fearlessly slice through opponents en route to the rim. That is the one component this Louisville team so obviously lacks. It is Mack’s foremost mission to make sure this ingredient emerges on future Louisville rosters. It is the piece which might take this currently overachieving yet imperfect product and turn it — in a few years — into the next special Louisville team.
For now, though, the boomerang principle remains, and Chris Mack knows what his own particular boomerang looks like.
We will see if he learns and adjusts to life’s difficulties and complexities, just like the people at the soup kitchen.
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