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Louisville Cardinals (2001: 12-19)

The following team preview is provided by Blue Ribbon. For the nation's most comprehensive look at this and all Division I teams, be sure to order the 2001-02 Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, on sale now at 1-800-775-2518.

Program overview

It is still hard to believe. Denny Crum is no longer the coach at Louisville. Rick Pitino is his successor.

The current Hall of Fame coach yields to the future Hall of Fame coach. A program that truly had become moribund in Crum's final years is injected with verve and enthusiasm with the arrival of Pitino.

Give Louisville credit: The Cardinals and their fans gave Crum the proper sendoff, full of respect and admiration and appreciation, while greeting Pitino, the once-hated coach of the rival Wildcats, with open arms.

Conference USA needs Louisville to occupy its once-perennial role as a serious factor on the national scene, just as it needs Cincinnati and Memphis to keep their respective cities enthralled with college basketball. No college venue is superior to Freedom Hall when the joint is packed, the fans are rockin' and the Cardinals are on a roll.

The question is: How soon can Pitino get these Cardinals rolling? You have to listen real close to hear Pitino predict his first team at Louisville could be pretty doggone good. Real close.

Pitino would not be Pitino if he didn't think he could do better. This is a guy who went 219-50 at Kentucky. No, he didn't have the success he wanted with the Boston Celtics, but every coach in Conference USA believes Louisville will play at a very high level.

When it comes to personnel, Pitino is brutally honest. He's saying many of the same things Crum said about this team last year: The shooting is horrible, the entire frontcourt is a collective project and the skills need constant nurturing.

Backcourt

Pitino is not shy about declaring junior guard Reece Gaines his best player.

At 6-5, Gaines (13.9 ppg, 3.3 apg, 3.5 rpg) is tall for a point guard, his natural position, and Pitino will deploy Gaines at both the one and the two spots this season. He should thrive in Pitino's run-and-shoot system; last season he made 42.6 percent of his three-point shots, making him one of Conference USA's best from long range.

Gaines is also the most experienced player on the roster, by far. He has started 58 of the 61 games he has played at Louisville after establishing himself as a solid C-USA player his freshman season. He became a much steadier player last season and learned how to take over games when it was needed: 22 points against Maryland, 16 against Loyola-Chicago, 28 against Tulane, 23 against Memphis.

After Gaines, Louisville's most veteran player is 6-5 junior swingman Erik Brown (10.3 ppg, 3.9 rpg), a transfer from Morehead State who became eligible midway through last season. Though Brown started just four games all season, he trailed only Gaines and now-departed shooting guard Marques Maybin in total points scored for the season.

Expect Pitino to use Brown and Gaines as post-up options in his high set offense. At 205 pounds, Brown is strong enough to take defenders down low and a good enough shooter to keep them honest from the outside.

The newcomer from whom the most is expected this season is the confident and quicksilver 6-1 freshman Carlos Hurt, a Houston native who played his senior season at Louisville Moore. When Hurt committed to the Cardinals, it was seen as a huge step for Crum and his staff in their quest to rebuild the program.

Hurt predicted that many young stars would follow. The Cards certainly put together a more-than-respectable recruiting class, but not one of the nation's best.

Hurt is the best of the bunch. His trash-talking battles with Memphis freshman Dajuan Wagner at summer camps should continue into this season. Hurt is not as advanced as Wagner, though he has plenty of game to back up his talk.

Hurt, who averaged 24.6 points and 7.0 assists as a senior, is a pure point guard who will allow Pitino to move Gaines to shooting guard.

Bryant Northern (3.5 ppg, 1.3 rpg, 1.2 apg) is a 6-1 sophomore who played 12.3 minutes per game after joining the team as a walk-on last season. He wasn't shy about shooting the ball, and will probably have the opportunity to shoot plenty this season. If so, his effectiveness needs to improve, because he hit only 32.1 percent from the field, 28.4 percent from three-point range and 60.7 percent from the free-throw line for the season.

Northern will battle for playing time with 6-1 junior-college transfer Junior Mohammed, the much-shorter brother of former Kentucky center Nazr Mohammed. Pitino is fond of Mohammed and expects him to contribute.

Frontcourt

There is no shortage of frontcourt players on the Louisville roster, though some -- including Pitino -- might argue that quantity does not at all mean quality.

Louisville's frontcourt was constantly under construction last season, with no single player or collective players providing reliable production. Crum complained about the frontcourt from start of the season until the very end, and he had much to gripe about (except for the fact that he was responsible for assembling the players; it wasn't like they were assigned to the Cardinals).

This is Louisville's glaring weakness again this season, and the situation was made even worse when the most talented (but also inconsistent) big man, Muhammed Lasege, was ruled officially and finally ineligible after a ruling of the Kentucky state supreme court.

The most productive member of the frontcourt was Ellis Myles (6.1 ppg, 5.5 rpg), a 6-8 sophomore who enters this season in much better shape. Pitino said Myles has lost 25 pounds (down to 225) and reduced his body fat from 18 percent to nine percent.

Myles hit 48.1 percent of his shots last season, which isn't bad for a freshman big man. The .536 free-throw percentage, however, is more indicative of his touch. He did have 55 assists, a high number for a big man who was not a scoring target.

Joseph N'Sima (2.6 ppg, 5.6 rpg), a 6-8, 215-pound senior from France, played the most minutes of any big man last season, and, though he didn't have huge numbers, showed the most savvy of any of them. He was a good low-post defender who led the team with 55 blocks, and his 44 assists represented a nice number for a big guy.

Luke Whitehead (5.6 ppg, 3.1 rpg), a 6-7, 215-pound sophomore, was last year's marquee incoming freshman, but he never emerged as anything more than an occasional contributor. His father, Eddie, played at Louisville in the '60s, and Whitehead was a standout player at Oak Hill Academy as a senior. His best game last season came against Tulane, when he scored 16 points and pulled seven rebounds. That suggests he can adjust well to Pitino's system, because Tulane forced a running tempo.

Hajj Turner (3.2 ppg, 2.2 rpg) is not physically suited to the Pitino system, but he will make contributions. Two knee surgeries before last season set him back, but he showed he is scrappy and can be a good offensive rebounder.

A 6-8, 220-pound senior, Turner's deficiencies are the same as most of Louisville's frontcourt players -- shooting and ballhandling.

Mack Wilkinson and Simeon Naydenov do not project as anything more than spot contributors, with the five minutes per game of last season about right, if that much. Wilkinson, a 6-8, 235-pound sophomore from Louisville and Naydenov, a 6-7, 200-pound sophomore from Bulgaria, each averaged less than two points and two rebounds per game last season when they did play.

How much will Pitino get out of the two late freshman signees, local products Brandon Bender (6-9, 245) and Larry O'Bannon (6-5, 200)? Some, but not a lot. He is a little higher on O'Bannon, who averaged 21.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.3 assists last season at Louisville Male High School than Bender at this point.

Bottom line

On paper, Louisville rates as a .500 team, if that. Or, let's say a .500 team that is more likely to go south than to exceed expectations.

But you must factor in Pitino's remarkable college coaching record. He gets players to exceed what had been their best basketball. He runs a high-octane system that produces better-than-expected performances, from talented and non-talented players alike. He will have Louisville's players conditioned as well as any team in the country.

The key, says Pitino, will be defense. The Cardinals will press and they will run. They will also focus on shutting down the halfcourt. His preparation for games will benefit from the presence of assistant coaches who have been in Conference USA for several years.

Conference USA coaches expect Louisville to be a great defensive team. And they know that Gaines was already on the verge of becoming one of the best guards in the league, that Brown showed potential but never really looked comfortable last season and that Hurt is one of the most skilled freshmen in the country.

Louisville must get something out of the frontcourt on a consistent basis. Of all the things that sabotaged Crum's last season, it was the frontcourt's unreliability that dogged the Cardinals most. When the frontcourt did produce, as in a masterful performance against Memphis, with one of the league's best frontcourts, the Cardinals won handily.

Whatever the final record, Cardinal fans should have more fun than they have had at least since the Final Eight run in the mid-'90s. There will be no questions about the coach's retirement, no wondering about the future, no doubt that this program is headed in a winning direction.

So buckle up, Card fans. Expect a lot of early turbulence and then watch as the Cardinals pull off an upset or two in January or February. The Cards won't win Conference USA, but they will have something to say about who does.