Give @MattZemek a twitter follow and check out his musings on college sports at https://www.patreon.com/Zemek.
Other than the inability to bother the Minnesota Golden Gophers, the Louisville Cardinals were just fine in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday in Des Moines.
Other than the inability to force turnovers or rebound or execute various defenses, the Cardinals did great.
Other than the lack of endgame clock management or timely defensive switches, Louisville had everything under control.
It was simply a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day for the Cardinals and Chris Mack. The reality of Chris Mack struggling in the NCAA Tournament as the coach of a higher-seeded team — in marked contrast to his successes as the coach of a lower-seeded team — was reaffirmed on Thursday in Iowa.
Given how well Louisville should be able to recruit and perform in future years, Mack better get used to coaching higher seeds in March… and that leads me to my brief point about the Cardinals: This loss was extremely ugly… and therefore, in a certain sense, beautiful.
I invite my Louisville readers to consider why this would be viewed as a beautiful and ugly loss for the Cards.
The bottom line: If you are going to have a terrible, one-game crashout in the NCAA Tournament, you would want it to occur under the PRECISE circumstances surrounding Louisville this year.
Inherited roster. New coach. A program climbing out of a ditch after years of turmoil. A group of players who consistently worked hard but weren’t always smart in high-pressure situations. Louisville was dealing with all sorts of limitations. If there was a year in which to be happy with an NCAA Tournament appearance and not worry about March-based performance, this was it. On balance, Louisville still overachieved relative to preseason expectations — maybe not to the extent seen or felt in mid-February, but still better than many had a right to expect.
March — as no one needs to explain — is a fragile time. Players can get spooked in and by the national spotlight. Louisville certainly had its share of deer-in-the-headlights moments.
As a program, you never WANT to lose in the NCAA Tournament, but if you ARE going to lose in March, you do want to lose when all the pieces are not lined up for a deep run. In other words, you don’t want a nightmare game when you are a 2 seed with national championship aspirations. You don’t want to lose when you are Michigan State against Middle Tennessee in 2016.
This Louisville team was not in MSU’s position — not even close.
Anyone who is coming back next season can file away this disaster against Minnesota and use it as both fuel and education for 2020. Those veterans coming back can guide the newbies on the 2020 roster and enable Louisville to learn necessary lessons which accompany the growth of a program under a new coach.
Did Chris Mack coach poorly, and did his players respond poorly, to Minnesota? Sure they did. No one is hiding from those realities. Yet, this was not supposed to be a season in which everything clicked into place. Mack made this patchwork lineup work a lot better than many people thought it would.
Next year, Louisville needs to be ready for March. Thursday probably increased the chances that the Cardinals will be prepared for their spotlight moment.
Make sure you follow the All Sports Discussion Twitter account at @AllSportsDACC and please like our Facebook Page
Leave a Reply