The one good thing about your rival being at the peak of their powers is the reward for beating them. And when your rival is operating at the peak of their powers with a head coach that’s especially fun to hate, bonus points.
Louisville is certainly not Tennessee’s rival – the Vols won the first six meetings from 1913-1922, and the Cardinals have won 12 of the other 13 since – but Rick Pitino used to be. He went 14-3 against the Vols at Kentucky, winning the last nine in a row by an average of 25 points. Those nine games were my middle and high school days, and those blowouts gave me a significant amount of disdain for Pitino. But then he left for my beloved Boston Celtics; it was an odd feeling but, hey, the way he dominated at UK, surely he’ll bring championships back to Boston, right?
Nope: 36-46, 19-31 in the shortened 1999 season, 35-47, then fired after a 12-22 start. Larry Bird wasn’t walking through that door, but half the guys who played at Kentucky were.
Pitino went to Louisville, which had a four-year home-and-home agreement with Buzz Peterson’s Vols. And…one-point loss, three-point loss, three-point loss, blow out. Three years later the most successful Tennessee team in program history went to the Sweet 16, ran into Louisville as a three-seed…and lost by 19.
All of that to say this: no individual has done more damage with less return to more teams that I care about than Rick Pitino. And I’m mad he’s not on the sideline to get beat tonight.
Instead it’s Chris Mack, a great coach who made four Sweet 16’s and an Elite Eight in nine years at Xavier, plus won the Big East outright over Villanova last year. It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Louisville on the national stage for something other than Pitino and drama: after going Final Four, National Champs, Sweet 16, Elite Eight from 2012-15, the Cardinals were ineligible in 2016, got bounced in the second round in 2017, and fell to the NIT during their tumultuous 2018.
A 9-9 finish in the ACC is still nothing to sneeze at; the Cardinals finished 38th in KenPom but graduated their starting point guard and lost three others early to the NBA. They’ve played a lot of no one in their 3-0 start – Nicholls State, Southern, and Vermont – but do jump out at you statistically in a couple of ways.
The Cardinals are fifth nationally in effective field goal percentage and first in the country in free throw rate. In the opener against Nicholls, Louisville went 42-of-55 (!!!!!!) at the line. Nicholls went 12-of-16. In a 50-point win over Southern, they were 31-of-39. Against Vermont, 26-of-33. The Cardinals are 27th nationally in free throws attempted and 21 of the teams ahead of them have played at least five games; Louisville has played three.
So yeah, these dudes get to the line. Jordan Nwora (6’7″) averages 18-6, V.J. King (6’6″) averages 11-4, and Akoy Agau (6’8″) averages 7-7. Throw in 6’11” Malik Williams, and you’ve got plenty of length to go around in the rotation, plus a really hot shooting guard in Darius Perry. It looks like a Pitino team. The good news: Tennessee, so far, has been much better at defending without fouling this year. Their 50 personal fouls on the season rank 327th in the nation.
The good guys have been playing their starting five a bunch of minutes early: between 28.6 for Kyle Alexander and 33.7 for Admiral Schofield. Fulkerson and Pons have been the go-to’s off the bench, but it’ll be interesting to see how Lamonte Turner factors into the equation in his first game back.
Of course, Kansas is out there waiting. There’s a scenario here where the Vols could sweep the week and find themselves ranked second in the nation next week, behind the winner of Duke and, I’m assuming, Gonzaga in Maui. The Vols are currently ranked fifth and could/should get a shot at the #2 Jayhawks on Friday. Virginia is at #4, but their Battle 4 Atlantis field isn’t as strong this year, with only #25 Wisconsin ranked in the rest of the bracket.
That’s all getting ahead of ourselves, but when you’re ranked this high that’s what Thanksgiving basketball is all about: let’s see what we’ve got against the best of the best and file it away for March. The Vols are certainly playing to win the SEC again, but also to get as far up the bracket as possible. A shot at Kansas lets you take your temperature; beating the Jayhawks allows you to stay in the top-line national conversation.
But to get there, we’ll have to go through Louisville first. 5:00 PM ET, ESPN2. Happy Thanksgiving.