The semifinals of the Big East Tournament takes place tonight and we will see the Louisville Cardinals take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The game is scheduled for a 9:30 pm (Eastern) start time and will be televised on ESPN. Currently the Odds for the game have Louisville favored by 8.5 points while the total sits at 123.
Analysis: Notre Dame has reached the semifinals of the Big East tournament in each of the past three seasons, only to see its hopes of making the championship game dashed by Louisville in the last two. The only loss that Notre Dame has suffered in the last four outings actually came against Louisville in a 73-57 rout on the road. That contest was much different than the five-overtime thriller the two teams were a part of in South Bend on Feb. 4 when the Irish came out on top. First-team All-Big East selection Jack Cooley (6 points, 6 rebounds) struggled yet again for the Irish but it didn't matter as his supporting cast came up big. Connaughton hit 6-of-10 shots from beyond the arc for a game-high 18 points, while Garrick Sherman netted 16 points to go with six rebounds off the bench for the Irish. Cooley (13.0 ppg, 10.4 rpg) was a double-double machine all season but has struggled in the tourney as he had just two points in the team's second round matchup against Rutgers. Connaughton (9.0 ppg) has picked up the slack scoring a combined 39 points in the two games, while hitting 12-of-18 shots from beyond the arc. Jerian Grant (13.4 ppg, 5.7 apg) is a strong scorer and distributor as well and had 17 points and six assists for the Irish on Thursday. Eric Atkins (11.5 ppg, 5.8 apg) can also dish the rock for the Irish who are extremely efficient on the offensive end, shooting 46.6 percent from the field, while assisting on 17.2 field goals a contest.
While Georgetown has gotten the headlines, Louisville has been playing some of its best basketball of the season down the stretch and it continued in Thursday's quarterfinal. The Cardinals posted a 74-55 rout of Villanova for their 11th win in the last 12 contests. Nine of those wins have come by at least 14 points for Louisville which is trying to defend its tournament title from a year ago. Leading scorer Russ Smith (18.3 points) fought through an ankle injury and posted 28 points in the Cardinals’ quarterfinal win over Villanova, an inspired performance hours after he learned that his high school coach – Archbishop Molloy’s Jack Curran – died at the age of 82. Louisville forced 25 turnovers against Villanova, but a more telling statistic of the defensive domination may have been the 58 deflections Louisville’s assistant coaches charted, a total coach Rick Pitino stated was a record for one of his teams - college or pro. The Cardinals finished with 12 steals, with seven players collecting at least one and four players tallying at least two. Louisville has outscored opponents by an average of 15.9 points during its winning streak.
Pick: I like the Irish to get it done here. The Irish had a big come from behind win over Marquette yesterday and hey are a team that is playing really loose right now. Mike Brey is an excellent coadch and usually has an outstanding game plan for big games like this. The Irish lost by 16 in their season finale to the Cardinals and have been knocked out of the Big East tournament in 2 of the last 3 years by them, so I look for a big payback game by the Irish here.
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