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Birds eye view:
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – It didn’t take long for Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino to figure out what his team is up against when the Cardinals (24-8, 14-4) face Boise State (25-8, 12-4), Friday night, in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Although Pitino has only been scouting the Broncos for four days, the challenges that BSU present are easy to see.
“We’re facing an outstanding ball club, who as far as shooting the basketball and running the break, does it as good as any team in the country,” Pitino said Thursday. “So we got to take good shots ourselves, make sure we don’t turn it over and keep them out of transition.”
Entering the tournament, BSU ranked second in the nation in field goal shooting percentage. The Broncos shot 50.9 percent from the floor, while also shooting 39.7 percent from beyond the arc. That high percentage, paired with BSU’s fast break philosophy, has the Cardinals taking notice.
“A lot of teams shoot the three point shot, but their percentages are not that good,” Pitino said. “This is a team that shoots 51 percent from the field, shoots a high percentage from the three, and has a low post game. And I think that’s what makes them so competitive.”
Pitino compared the BSU offensive philosophy to that of Brigham Young University – a team that Louisville lost to earlier this season.
“They do a lot of things offensively that BYU does, in terms of [their] transition game, in terms of the way they work inside to out, in terms of the way they kind of trickle around the three point shoot because they’re so good at it,” Pitino said. “So they remind me of BYU. Unfortunate thing is we lost to BYU.”
Reggie Larry leads the way for the high scoring BSU offense that averages 82.0 points per game. Larry earned First Team All-Western Athletic Conference honors after scoring 19.6 points and grabbing 9.3 rebounds per game.
“He’s certainly pound for pound, inch for inch a very talented basketball player, outside and inside,” Pitino said.
What Louisville will try and use to slow down Larry and the rest of the Broncos is size and power. Not only do the Cardinals lineup bigger than BSU, they also will apply full court pressure through much of the game trying to keep the Broncos from finding any sort of offensive rhythm.
“Our press, no matter if we play a team that plays up tempo or a slow down team, we don’t really change our style all that much,” Louisville center David Padgett said. “I think the one thing that is probably constant in all of our defenses is the fact that it comes down to taking great shots on offense. It allows us to set up our press.”
Louisville will need to be smart with the basketball, facing a BSU team that allowed opponents to shoot just 43.9 percent from the field. The Broncos may look to zone Louisville to take away the Cardinals’ size disadvantage. That won’t necessarily be an automatic solution for BSU, however, as Louisville shot 34.2 percent from the 3-point line this season.
Perhaps the biggest thing work in Louisville’s favor, however, is the amount of experience the program has in tournament situations. Louisville has qualified for the NCAA tournament 25 times in the last 32 years.
BSU, meanwhile, is making its fourth tournament appearance all time, and its first in 14 years. But while it is possible that the draught has the Broncos feeling extra hungry for a win, Pitino said he thinks that his team is just as determined as anyone else in the tournament.
“We’re very hunger ourselves,” Pitino said. “We’ll play like starving dogs. So does every team in the NCAA. If they beat us it’s because they have the ability to beat us."
Jake Garcin
