Caveat Emptor: Your venerable Cardinal chronicler takes no responsibility if what you read makes zero sense, nor for any of the typos which may be contained herein.<\/p>\n
My fingers have the hippy hippy shakes.<\/p>\n
I have skipped a light fandango, turned cartwheels \u2018cross the floor to get to my keyboard. I am exhausted. <\/p>\n
Because these are the afternoons fans pray for. <\/p>\n
I rarely reference betting lines, but . . .<\/p>\n
. . . for some unfathomable reason, the Louisville Cardinals, staggering to the finish line of the regular season, hobbled by injury and illness, opened as a one and a half point favorite.<\/p>\n
Which soon experienced a three point flip to + 1.5.<\/p>\n
Well, ladies and gents, U of L was a toke, an Adrian Wooley trey and a pair of Ryan Conwell FTs over the line.<\/p>\n
Louisville, fashioning its best effort of the campaign bested surging Miami, winners of 9 of their last 11.<\/p>\n
In a game with fatigue factoring in and marksmanship reminiscent of a biathlon, U of L outshot a similarly en fuego Miami squad.<\/p>\n
In the opening half, U of L was 18\/29 (62%) and 9\/15 (60%) from South Beach. The Hurricanes themselves hit 55% from the field and had cut the smokin\u2019 Cardinals once 12 point advantage to four.<\/p>\n
Playing maturely, to the intermission buzzer, the Cards sandwiched a McThreely, and deuces by Wooley and Conwell around a lone Miami tally for 46-37 lead at the break.<\/p>\n
After halftime, the Cardinals continued to answer every Miami foray, maintaing measure . . .<\/p>\n
. . . until 3:48 was left. When the home team, newly in the Top 25, forged ahead 79-78. And then by 81-78.<\/p>\n
Lady luck showed up in Cardinal gear.<\/p>\n
A missed McKneely J was tipped in by a dude from the U.<\/p>\n
Wooley\u2019s pair of FTs was answered with triple.<\/p>\n
Oh, I\u2019m too nervous still to go through the whole sequence.<\/p>\n
My point. Louisville surrendered its advantage four times, had an absolutely horrible possession ending with a shot clock giveaway at :51, until with eighteen seconds remaining, Adrian Wooley bullseyed a three for an 89-87 advantage.<\/p>\n
Which they did not relinquish.<\/p>\n
There was strategy, kids.<\/p>\n
Half of U of L\u2019s makes before the break were from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
In the 2d, a dozen of the Cards\u2019 15 makes were at the rim or pull up Js in the paint.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been awhile, my memory is foggy, but I think they call those \u201cmid range.\u201d<\/p>\n
Credit Pat Kelsey. The offensive tweak in the 2d was obviously by design.<\/p>\n
U of L was outscored by 13 on second chance points. By five at the line. By five off the bench.<\/p>\n
Because they continually responded when peril was present.<\/p>\n
Ryan Conwell had a huge opening stanza with 18 total, 7\/12 from the field, 4\/7 bombs.<\/p>\n
But didn\u2019t force it in the second, attempting only a couple more FGs.<\/p>\n
He was 6\/6 at the line, led U of L with 24.<\/p>\n
Isaac McKneely was magnificent, his 15 points came with but two triples.<\/p>\n
His four boards tied for best for Louisville with the Player of the Game.<\/p>\n
That would be Adrian Wooley who also had four, along with 15 points. Six (6) assists. NO turnovers.<\/p>\n
And, you know, the Shot of the Season.<\/p>\n
Do I ever not mention J\u2019Vonne Hadley?<\/p>\n
He was the rudder with 16 on 6\/8 shooting.<\/p>\n
Louisville wobbled, but did not falter.<\/p>\n
Can you tell I\u2019m pumped?<\/p>\n
Enough. My fingers are still shaking.<\/p>\n
If I missed something you consider important, sorry.<\/p>\n
Feel free to fill in the blanks below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caveat Emptor: Your venerable Cardinal chronicler takes no responsibility if what you read makes zero sense, nor for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3108,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-182554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-basketball","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}