Cardinals stifle Walker and rout Huskies 71-58

The Louisville Cardinals used a swarming match-up zone to render Kemba Walker ineffective and led by Sophomore guard Peyton Siva's 15 points they routed the UCONN Huskies last night, 71-58. Yet another, fast, tough, well coached Big East team had 3 men surrounding Walker every time he had the ball forcing him into bad shots and a poor shooting night. (3-10 from the field) Walker scored 5 points in the first half, forced shots and was not finding open men. Most of his 16 points came from the charity stripe after the game was out of reach.
Down by nine at the half, the Huskies started the second period with a 9-0 run to tie the score on 3 treys in a row; however, they ran out of steam, JCM got his third foul and went to the bench and the rout was on. On offense for Louisville, Peyton Siva drove the lane at will and either scored or dished off to big men inside for easy lay-ups. For the Huskies Walker and JCM both finished with 16 points, however Walker shot poorly and JCM was 6-8 from the floor. Oriakhi played well with 13 hard earned points but Smith continues to disappoint and Lamb had an off night and didn't score.
The Huskies continue to have fits against good match up zones. I still feel there is not enough motion in their half court sets and as you all know I do not like Calhoun's substituting patterns. He reacts with anger to the slightest mistake and is constantly yanking players in and out. I thought one particularly destructive move came in the first half. JCM entered the game with about five minutes gone and played a sensational 10 minutes scoring 11 points and snaring 5 rebounds. Again, he found open spots, shot well and was always around the ball. When he picked up his third foul, Calhoun appropriately took him out and put in Niels Giffey. Giffey looked more confident than usual, seemed into the flow and without hesitation hit a nice three. About thirty seconds later he made a defensive mistake and Calhoun yanked him; he came back late in the second half and played poorly. Here you have a Freshman with a lot of potential who has played poorly all year. He looks confident for the first time this season and "bam" he gets yanked; you could almost hear his balloon deflating as he skulked back to the bench.
I thought that ESPN's "remind me what teams are playing again" announcing team of Brent "Oh, you want to know the names of the players?" Musberger and the pedantic, self absorbed Bob "over-inflated bag of hot air" Knight detracted from the game. Musberger spent most of the evening reverentially calling Knight "Coach" and as usual knew little about the action on the floor. Knight's time has past; his color commentary is canned and he was clearly unfamiliar with the teams. For example, one minute into the game he expressed surprise that Louisville was in a zone defense. "Hello" that is how they beat UCONN last time they played and the way Big East teams have stopped Walker and the Huskies. About one minute later, he said that Louisville would have trouble matching UCONN's inside scoring pressure. The Huskies have no inside presence, one of their most glaring weaknesses and, in fact, Louisville's freshman Center, Gorgui Dieng, dominated the paint, scored 13 points and led the game in rebounds. Third, when JCM entered the game he immediately scored 4 points and next time down got open inside for a lay-up. Knight's comment was a UCONN player got open inside. He did not know it was JCM and was not familiar with the story line on him over the last three games. Get these guys off the air.
Next week, the Huskies play Marquette at the Civic Center on Thursday (which this reporter will cover from courtside) and Cincinatti away on Sunday. The huskies need to win both these games before their two tough final Big East tilts against West Virginia and Notre Dame.

"You Heard it here First"
Steve