Four months later, it's David Padgett and one of those sophomore knuckleheads
— Earl Clark — that have helped lead the Cardinals one step away from
returning to the Final Four.
It's not as if it's such a shock that Pitino's team pulled away from No. 2
Tennessee. This is a Louisville club filled with experience and talent — and
one that held a Vols team that was averaging 82.5 points per game to just 34
percent shooting in a 79-60 final.
It's the road that the Cardinals took to get there that makes this tournament
run so sweet.
"This is as good as it gets," Pitino said.
Padgett was prepared to board a bus to Las Vegas for a tournament when Pitino
informed him that he had a broken kneecap, yet another setback in the
injury-riddled career of one of the most sought-after big men in the past
decade.
The Cardinals staff went as far as to research the possibility of a medical
redshirt because Pitino was told there was a slim chance Padgett would be back
at all. However, Padgett did his best impression of the Bionic Man and returned
in six weeks.
Then the Cardinals made their resurgence. After a 9-4 start with a quartet of
what appeared to be "bad" losses, Louisville became one of the
nation's hottest teams, winning nine straight through the entire month of
February.
Padgett was the key, especially because the Cardinals weren't getting much
production out of their point guards. Edgar Sosa, one of the sophomores that
utterly frustrated Pitino, has regressed after a solid freshman season and Andre McGee hasn't shown much consistency.
Derrick Caracter, is well, Derrick Caracter. Pitino has finally accepted that
the over-hyped big man isn't going to change his ways and will always be tagged
with the "potential" label, but may never live up to the hype he got
before high school.
"They are a different breed," Pitino said of the Northeast
sophomore trio of Caracter, Sosa and Earl Clark. "They aren't normal
kids."
Caracter and Sosa have remained role players, but the ultra-talented Clark
has finally begun to tap the natural ability that could make him an NBA lottery
pick.
Clark has been an enigma for what seems like an eternity. His practice habits
since he arrived on campus nearly two years ago haven't just been questioned by
Pitino, they've been ripped apart.
"He had no work ethic at all," Pitino said. "But somewhere
along the way, David affected him. He started really listening to David and now
that he's started to learn how to work hard, he's lethal.
"We knew we were sitting on a brick of dynamite with him," Pitino
said.
But there was Clark, in the first half of the Tennessee game, nonchalant and
virtually invisible through the first 20 minutes. Louisville assistant coach
Steve Masiello even joked with Clark that maybe the 6-foot-9, multi-dimensional
New Jersey native didn't realize the game tipped off at 10 p.m. Maybe he thought
it started an hour or so later.
However, the explosion went off a little less than five minutes into the
second half. The Cardinals held a slim three-point lead, and Clark took over the
game for the next three minutes.
He drove to the basket for a layup. Made a jumper. Got loose for an emphatic
dunk and went to the basket for two more points. Toss in three rebounds and a
key block during the stretch and the Cardinals built the lead to nine points.
"They told me I was sleeping a little bit at halftime," Clark said
of the staff. "I didn't want to go home yet. We've been through too much.
Too many ups and downs."
There was even a Caracter sighting. In fact, he may have had the game's key
basket when he converted a three-point play with 4:01 left to give the Cardinals
a 15-point lead.
The Vols' point-guard play — or lack thereof — was exposed. Tennessee
coach Bruce Pearl opted to go with J.P. Prince as his starting point guard —
an experiment he started three games ago at the beginning of the NCAA
tournament.
Prince had a rough go, but he wasn't the only one. Chris Lofton went out the
way his season began — unable to buy a bucket. Tyler Smith picked up his
fourth foul with 12:43 left in the game.
"I've been coaching a long time, and never has the tempo of the game
been dictated so much by the opponent," Pearl said. "We usually
dictate tempo."
Not against this Louisville team. The one that almost never was.
Jeff Goodman is a senior college basketball writer for FOXSports.com. He can
be reached at GoodmanonFOX@aol.com
or check out his blog, Good
'N Plenty.