Maybe we aren't who I thought we were....



But then again, maybe we're closer than I thought a week ago.

Now isn't the easiest time to be a fan of the University of Louisville men's basketball team.


Four weeks ago, on the heels of a snarling, hard-fought, leave-your-soul-on-the-court effort against a more talented and more physically gifted Kentucky team, I believed good things lay ahead for the current Cardinal squad. They had overcome a horrendous start in the most hostile of environments to take the Wildcats down to the last minute; to paraphrase former U of L football coach Howard Schnellenberger, the Cards weren't defeated, they just happened to be trailing when the clock hit zero.

Then the Cards began showing an exasperating inability to close out games. Against Villanova at home, U of L came out smoking, building a 17-point lead in the first half, but lost. At Pittsburgh, a five-point lead melted away in the final 54 seconds when the Cards clanked four of five free throws down the stretch. Similar meltdowns led to losses at Seton Hall and West Virginia.

I asked myself, "What in the name of the original Cardiac Cards is going on here?"

Many on Planet Red have pointed the finger at the senior guards, particularly point guard Edgar Sosa, saying some variation of this: "A senior point guard shouldn't be making the kind of errors Sosa is making running the offense." They also criticize the number of minutes Jerry Smith is getting, mired as he has been in a season-long shooting slump.

Permit me a reasoned dissent.

First, though Sosa is a senior point guard, this marks the first season he has been the primary initiator on offense. As a freshman and sophomore, he played in an offense that operated, for the most part, through center David Padgett. Last season, it was forward Terrence Williams who drove the bus. So Sosa is not as experienced at his craft as most senior point guards.

More relevantly, he hasn't played that badly; if anything, he's guilty of trying to win close games by himself, as are most of his teammates. U of L coach Rick Pitino seems at last to have conveyed that message to his team, or so it seemed last Monday night when Connecticut came to town.
Cardinal fans got a queasy sense of déjà vu when the Huskies pared a 19-point deficit to six with 7:32 to play, but this time Sosa hit a high-banking runner and fed Samardo Samuels for an easy hoop on consecutive possessions to stretch the lead back to double digits. U of L cruised from that point on, winning 82-69.

As I see it, the main task for the Cards is resisting the temptation to play to avoid losing. In games where this team builds a lead, it is best served by continuing to do the things on offense that got them that lead. When they try to get conservative and the lead dissipates, the trend has been for each individual to try to save the day alone. Sosa successfully bucked the trend against UConn by taking what the Huskies' defense permitted and keeping his teammates involved.

If he keeps doing that, and his mates follow suit, I'll feel much more confident about the remainder of the season.