(03-30-2014 10:37 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (03-30-2014 10:24 AM)Melky Cabrera Wrote: You didn't claim before the Season that the Cardinals would "be considered to be contenders". You claimed they actually would be. That in fact did not come to pass. They were eliminated in the Sweet 16 with no wins after the first weekend. Heck, Manhattan had the lead over your guys in the first round with a little over 2 minutes to go, game tied with under 2 minutes to go. You were lucky to get by them.
In fairness to Louisville, that's a very narrow definition of what a "contender" is. A contender isn't just a team that makes the Final 4. It's a mix of accomplishments and consensus opinion about how good a team appears to be.
Louisville won the AAC championship. They advanced to the Sweet 16. They were penciled in as a favorite to make the title game by many analysts. They were clearly "in the conversation" for much of the year, and especially at the end of the year, as a national title contender. IIRC, ESPN said that they were second only to Michigan State as a favorite to make the title game in their bracket challenge.
And it is also not fair to talk about close games. E.g., Louisville wasn't any more lucky to beat Manhattan than UConn was to beat St Joes. You guys looked like you were going to be bounced from the first round for almost the entirety of that game.
IMO, Kentucky fans can rag on Louisville, because (even setting their rivalry aside) they were the ones who knocked them out, and Louisville never beat them this year in anything. But fans of AAC schools? Louisville won the AAC, beating teams like UConn and USF to do it, so they established their dominion over us. None of us are in a position to cackle because someone from another conference knocked them off. We couldn't do it.
Did you actually read what Louisville fans were writing here 6 months ago? It wasn't your nuanced definition. As I said earlier, start with post #22 in this thread, which explicitly says that they could be awarded a spot in the 2014 Final Four back then. That same sentiment was repeated in numerous other thread.
They refused to acknowledge that losing Siva and Dieng were serious losses and that it would be necessary for Louisville to go through a rebuilding process to get where they wanted to be.
They were in fact not "in the conversation for much of the year". That didn't happen until February when things started to gel for them. They played an uncharacteristically weak OOC schedule and lost to the lone good teams on it when they encountered them, i.e. a very beatable North Carolina team and a very young and at that point inconsistent Kentucky team. There's a reason they were a 4-seed.
As for close games, it isn't that they lost a close game to Manhattan, it's WHO the close game was against. Manhattan is about as a mid major as it gets. They come from a 1-bid league. They don't recruit the same athletes that Louisville does. Talent-wise, their kids don't belong on the same floor as Louisville. St. Joe's had just won the A10 tournament, a conference that was a 6- bid league this year and had multiple ranked teams. There's no comparison between St. Joe's and Manhattan.
I'm not cackling about Louisville losing. I have great respect for the Louisville program. I'm cackling about some Louisville posters here (not you, AD Corbett), who now look completely foolish after trying to lord it over everyone else after last season's championship. Posters who refused to engage in any kind of reasonable discussion about their program. Posters who would abuse other posters who would raise legitimate questions about issues and challenges that the team would need to face going forward. Posters who claimed that referring to themselves as a "dynasty" was over the top.
Now those same posters are spinning like crazy when it comes time to eat their words. A simple apology would suffice.
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Pitino: Louisville on verge of "mini-dynasty"
