BIG EAST GAME PREVIEW: CARDS LOOK TO EXTEND STREAK VS WVU

January 31, 2009


Louisville looks for their ninth consecutive win on Saturday afternoon when they host the Mountaineers of West Virginia. Bob Huggins’ club is 4-3 in conference play and 15-5 overall heading into the noon showdown at Freedom Hall.

After a slow start to the season, the Cards have been rolling since conference play began and are tied with Marquette atop the Big East at 7-0 in conference play. UL has to resist the urge to look ahead as they have a date with UConn looming on Monday night.

Here are some pregame stories and previews:

WVU at Home on the Road (Courier-Journal)
WVU Looking to Snap Louisville’s Streak (Register-Herald)
Louisville Shows Impressive Size, Depth (Charleston Gazette)
Cards Can Defend With Man or Zone (Daily Mail)
Freedom Riders (Charleston Gazette)
Looking for Big Win (Times West Virginian)

Louisville has been impressive since the beginning of conference play, impressing the pollsters as they have climbed to No. 7 in the latest rankings. They have also left an impression on WVU head coach Bob Huggins, and he is impressed.

“They’re good,” Huggins told media members this week during the coach’s conference call when addressing Louisville. “I think they’re the deepest team in the league…I think Rick [Pitino] does as good a job as anybody in our game of defining rolls and making sure everybody knows what they have to do. And then they just have incredible size. They stretch from one end of the floor in that 2-3 zone to the other.”

While the veteran WVU coach is saying all the right things publicly how impressed he is with Louisville, he is feeding his players motivation to try and steal a road win on Saturday. The Mountaineers certainly have an impressive stable of athletes that are also long and will get after it defensively, which is important in trying to win on the road.

This is likely a game where WVU misses a veteran guard handling the ball. Freshman Darryl ‘Truck’ Bryant is going to be under constant pressure, much like he was against Marquette. WVU will hope he took the game against the Golden Eagles as a learning experience to be applied in this one, because he will need to be smart with the ball and not get WVU out of their offense.

The other area of concern for WVU is in the middle where they do not have the size or bulk to slow down Samardo Samuels if Louisville dedicates themselves to going inside. The Mountaineers match-up elsewhere pretty well, but unless Alex Ruoff and Da’Sean Butler are both in the 20’s, the Terrence Williams, Earl Clark and Samuels front line should be able to pull this one out. The Cards are 6 1/2 –point favorites.

NBE Blogger Prediction:

Louisiville 67
West Virginia 61