ericcrawford

[ericcrawford]

Graphic Content: A Quick Look at Louisville's offensive structure

I like shot charts. It's one of the best things about the analytics site CBBanalytics.com. You can get all kinds of shot charts, and that's where these come from. Above, you can see Louisville's shot chart from the current season. The vast majority of shots are three-pointers, or happen near the rim. That's the hallmark of a modern offense. And a disciplined offense. It's what Louisville coach Pat Kelsey wants.

Now let's take a look at last season's Louisville shot chart.

As you can see, the shots are all over the place. Even though the teams had effective field goal percentages that weren't all that dissimilar, the effectiveness of the offenses is vast. Last year's Louisville team made 175 threes for the whole season. This year's has made 197 -- with 11 regular-season games -- and a postseason(!) yet to play.

[ericcrawford]

Kentucky's recent struggles: Temporary slide or SEC reality check?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WDRB) – Not to go all Thomas Paine on everybody here, but these are the times that try basketball teams’ souls.

For the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, the question is this: Was Saturday’s 74-69 loss to Vanderbilt just part of a Southeastern Conference-induced dip in fortunes, or a reality check on what is possible?

READ MORE AT WDRB.COM

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Turnovers cost Kentucky in 74-69 loss at Vanderbilt

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WDRB) — Mark Pope and the Kentucky men’s basketball team were looking forward to their SEC bye week to heal up. Instead, they came back thinner than they went in.

Starting forward Andrew Carr missed Saturday’s game at Vanderbilt with continuing back issues, and Kentucky ran into a rejuvenated Commodores team eager to bounce back from a loss at Alabama. Kentucky, looking to rebound from an Alabama loss of its own, struggled early, falling behind by 13 in the first half.

An 11-0 run to open the second half largely erased the deficit, but costly and often unforced turnovers plagued the Wildcats, especially down the stretch, and Vanderbilt walked away with a 74-69 victory in Memorial Gymnasium.

READ MORE AT WDRB.COM

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Congrats to Horse of the Year: Thorpedo Anna and trainer Ken McPeek

When he began the year with talented filly Thorpedo Anna, trainer Ken McPeek thought he could have the champion 3-year-old filly. Little did he realize he'd also have the Horse of the Year, as announced at the annual Eclipse Awards on Thursday night.

The Kentucky Oaks winner, who went on to run against the boys, losing by a head in the Travers, won six graded stakes races -- five of them Grade I races -- as a 3-year old, including the Breeders' Cup Distaff. She becomes just the 12th female since 1887 to win Horse of the Year, which generally goes to male horses. She is the first to do it since Havre de Grace in 2011, and only the second 3-year-old filly to win the honor, following Rachel Alexandra in 2009.

It caps a great year for Lexington-based McPeek, who won both the Kentucky Derby and Oaks. He bought Thorpedo Anna as a yearling for $40,000.

"It's been a fantastic ride, and it's only starting," McPeek said. "She's going to keep running."

[ericcrawford]

Riding win streak, U of L's Kelsey slaps away concept of complacency

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- At this point, anyone who follows college basketball can read a schedule. You can see that Pat Kelsey's Louisville basketball team does not have a team in the national Top 25 in its path. Maybe even you can see that the Cardinals are projected to lose only one more game in the estimation of Ken Pomeroy's advanced metrics.

Kelsey sees the same things. There's a lot of back-patting going on when you win seven games in a row — especially in a program that hasn't done it in a while, even more in a program that won just 12 games the past two seasons.

Among the possible stumbling blocks ahead for the Cardinals is injury, just bad shooting nights, exemplary performances by opponents. But the biggest one, perhaps, is complacency, or overconfidence.

READ MORE AT WDRB.COM

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Contrast between UK's success and Cal's struggles is stark

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The confluence of events was too much not to note on Tuesday night. Here were Kentucky and Mark Pope, beating their second nationally ranked opponent in as many games, loving life after a win over No. 11 Texas A&M in Rupp Arena.

And there was John Calipari, unable to muster the offense necessary to beat LSU on the road, his fourth straight loss to open SEC play in Arkansas.

Has Cal lost his fastball?

READ MORE AT WDRB.COM

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Someone has to say it -- U of L Basketball: Not Broken

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The Louisville men's basketball program was "broken." It was easy to think that. Even easier, I suppose, to say it.

With the departure of Rick Pitino, the threat of NCAA sanction, the general dysfunction of the university for a time, you can see where the "broken" narrative took hold. Certainly, winning only 12 games over two seasons felt like it broke something, if only the bond many fans felt with the program.

But here is the fact of the matter regarding Louisville basketball, with the benefit of hindsight that now includes the nation's eighth-longest active winning streak, which extended to seven games when the Cardinals blew out Syracuse 85-61 on Tuesday night.

The program wasn't broken. It was just the victim of poor management. The car was running. It just needed somebody to hit the gas, somebody who knew how to handle the horsepower.

READ MORE AT WDRB.COM

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Winning Ugly: UK defense shines in win over Texas A&M

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Heading into last night’s matchup at Kentucky, Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams said he had been watching game video of the No. 8-ranked Wildcats and “the prettiest offense in the country.”

On Tuesday night, the Aggies came into Rupp Arena with a bunch of mud and spray paint and mucked up the Kentucky offense pretty good. It didn’t matter. The Wildcats stuck to a defensive strategy of denying Texas A&M anything in the lane, and gradually got their offense going in the second half to beat the No. 11 Aggies 81-69.

READ MORE AT WDRB.COM

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For Louisville, Smith's game hasn't just translated to ACC, it has elevated

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- If I'm reading the room correctly where the University of Louisville and its men's basketball fans are concerned, the best summary of the current feeling is that they've had enough of the snow but they wouldn't mind a good bit more Reyne.

READ MORE AT WDRB.COM

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At Louisville, Brohm's QB reputation draws a crowd

You don’t always have to rifle the stat sheets to determine a coach’s reputation as a quarterback guru. At Louisville, you just need to look at the crowd in the quarterback room. In an age when few players seem willing to sit for any length of time, no fewer than 9 would-be gunslingers are taking QB reps during Jeff Brohm’s first preseason in Louisville, even after he added a presumptive starter in veteran Jack Plummer.

It speaks not only to his ability to put together high-octane passing attacks, but to the success he’s had preparing players to make the most of NFL opportunities when they have gotten them. Brohm’s offenses have ranked in the Top 25 in FBS in passing in 8 of his 9 seasons as a head coach, often without household names throwing or catching the passes. He has molded guys like Mike White (WKU) into QBs who could make the most of NFL starting chances. David Blough (Purdue) has a chance to be the opening week starter in Arizona, and 2023 Las Vegas Raiders draftee Aidan O’Connell (Purdue) has turned heads in his first preseason games.

For Plummer, familiarity was just one of the reasons he transferred from California to rejoin Brohm at Louisville. He played 4 seasons for Brohm at Purdue, appearing in 21 games with 13 starts over the final 3.

“Well, a lot of it is the system and it's a great system,” Plummer said. “The plan is very quarterback-friendly. I mean every quarterback he's had back to Western Kentucky has played in the NFL and some are still playing in the NFL. That's something that's drawn me. My goals are to play at the next level and I think that this a this place will help me do that. Being at California was good for me, just getting a lot of game experience, starting all 12 games and learning that way, now coming back to a system that I know and like playing in, with familiarity with the coaches. I think it was a good decision.“ Jeff’s younger brother Brian, Louisville’s QB coach and co-offensive coordinator, says they’re glad to have someone who is deeply familiar with the system in their first year at Louisville. “It's showtime for Jack,” Brohm said. “It's his sixth year. He's been a starter in multiple programs, done a really good job, both Purdue and at Cal. He's a veteran guy and I think he's kind of earned that right. . . . He's really smart. He understands football, understands coverages defenses, fronts, blitzes -- to the point where he can correct us coaches sometimes where he sees something. . . . He's got good athleticism. He's got good size, good pocket awareness and he throws a good football. So, he has a lot of the traits that you're looking for in your quarterback. We're always working on being consistently accurate. That's one thing we're always trying to improve.”

Brohm's system: "Quarterback friendly"

If you’re looking for how Jeff Brohm differs as a quarterback-friendly coach than, say, Scott Satterfield, who left Louisville for Cincinnati after last season, there’s no one better to ask than Brock Domann. He started 4 games for the Cardinals last season, and is back in the club’s crowded QB room this year.

“There’s a lot more reading involved,” Domann said. “Last year in Satt’s offense, it was very strict. Like, 1-2-3 to 4, where in this offense we still have reads, but there’s a little more flexibility of like, ‘Hey, make a play. Get the first down.’ There’s a little more allowing you to see it differently. Because, both (Brohms) being quarterbacks they understand that my vantage point is different from anyone else’s. You know, one’s in the booth and one’s on the sideline, but you’re on the field and they just want you to take over. I really love that. I think you’re going to see a really high level of quarterback play because of that freedom.”

Dohman said he got very comfortable with Satterfield’s more structured system, but is re-settling into Brohm’s allowing QBs to “play more free.”

Brady Allen is another quarterback who followed Brohm to Louisville from Purdue. The 6-5, 215-pound redshirt freshman from Fort Branch, Ind., says Brohm asks a lot of his quarterbacks.

“You’ve got to have toughness, you know, you’ve got to be smart,” Allen said. “I think his big three things are, smart, tough and accurate. And I think, you know, you look at everybody in NFL and those, those traits are very, very common. And they’re the three big traits he demands of us.”

The Brohm Playbook: "An answer for everything"

His playbook also is demanding. That lone was a shock for returning players, and for those who transfered in. Harrison Bailey, a 6-5, 225 transfer from UNLV who also played at Tennessee said that Brohm’s reputation, and some ties to players on the roster, brought him to Louisville.

“I would say coach Jeff and coach Brian are masterminds of college football,” Bailey said. “There’s an answer for everything. We have so many plays, it’s ridiculous – more than I’ve ever even learned in my time. But we literally have an answer for everything, so whatever they throw at us, we should have an answer for.”

Brian Brohm said the complexity of the playbook can play dividends.

“We’re an NFL-style system” he said. “When I say that, I mean we’re going to be multiple. We’re going to have different formations, different personnel, and we’re going to change things up week to week. And our guys have to learn that – why we’re doing it, how we’re attacking a defense. There are systems out there that aren’t as complex. Everyone has their own way of doing it. But we like to have a lot of different ways that we can attack a defense. So we have a lot of different stuff; therefore our guys have to learn a lot of football.”

Jeff Brohm played for Dennis Lampley at Trinity, then Howard Schnellenberger at Louisville. He went to the NFL and played for Bobby Ross in San Diego, and went to a Super Bowl. With Washington a year later, he played for Norv Turner. In San Francisco he played for George Seifert and Steve Mariucci. A year later he went to Tampa Bay and played behind Trent Dilfer for head coach Tony Dungy. In 1999, he played for Mike Shanahan in Denver.

Those are some high powered mentors, and some great offensive minds. In the college game, he learned from Bobby Petrino.

“You take a little from every stop, and you mold it to make it your own,” Brohm said. “And you try to take a guy with some ability, and put a system around him that can make him successful.”

That’s what he’s hoping to do with Plummer this season.

The closest thing Brohm has likely ever had to a young phenom was his brother, Brian, who now is Louisville’s quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. Brian was drafted by the Green Bay Packers. He has the advantage of having played for his brother, so he knows the demands on the quarterbacks he’s coaching.

And the pair might have something of a phenom in 4-star prospect Pierce Clarkson, who missed most of spring with a foot injury but has shown some impressive flashes in preseason camp.

“Pierce was here in the spring but didn't get the reps,” Brohm said. “So now he's getting the reps to go along with that. He's done a really good job in the meeting rooms of knowing what to do answering questions. So, he's very in tune that way and now we just need to get him on the field and let him go out there and execute.”

As the season approaches, the quarterback room brings an impressive comfort level to Louisville coaches. In a first season – at any school – that’s a luxury.

[ericcrawford]

March Madness Diary: Day 1

As March began in 2019, I was still editing photos from the last Day of February -- which was a perfect prelude to the rush of excitement, travel and memories that this time of year can bring in these parts -- especially if you’re a basketball fan.

Asia Durr scored 47 points to lead Louisville past the No. 10-ranked team in the nation -- North Carolina State, in a 30-point victory. I’d say they’re ready for March, though I suspect they carry more pressure than just about any other team around here, having returned all but one key player from a Final Four team, and in a conference that likely will place four Top 10 caliber teams in its conference tournament semifinals.

This time of year is a high-point every year, no matter who does what locally. It’s the culmination of a lot of work, and has its own rites of passage.

The flurry of end-of-season and conference tournaments, followed quickly by Selection Sunday, then the scramble of travel plans and quick getaways for the tournament.

My goal this year is to bring a little bit of this to you on a daily basis. Not so much what happens in front of the cameras, what you all may see on TV or read about, but what i experience or notice off to the side.

I’m not sure how long the Louisville women’s basketball team stayed in the KFC Yum! Center Thursday night to sign autographs for the thousands of people who waited in the concourse, but they probably came pretty close to ringing in the month of March doing just that.

It was a fitting start.

[ericcrawford]

Bring on UConn: Louisville women look ahead after routing Pitt without Durr

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- With Jeff Walz resting Asia Durr and his No. 4-ranked University of Louisville women’s basketball team facing No. 3 Connecticut on Thursday, a Sunday afternoon game against rebuilding Pittsburgh had all the makings of one that the Cardinals might overlook.

They didn’t. After falling behind 2-0 in the first minute of the game, Louisville would not give up another basket for 15:33. They outscored Pitt 39-4 in that stretch, led 41-12 at half and, after losing interest during parts of the second half, walked away with a 70-42 victory.

On the sidelines, Walz was anything but happy for much of the second half, shuttling subs in and out at just about every mistake.

“The first half was fantastic,” Walz said. “I was really impressed with us. We gave up zero second-chance points and two offensive rebounds, because we tried. . . . It was really impressive. . . . And then in the second I guess our players just decided to do what they thought was good. And that didn’t work out very well. . . . (Pitt) had seven second-chance points in the third quarter and scored four of their first five possessions.”

At one point, in a classic Walz pose, the coach sat with his head buried in his hands, his team up 25 midway through the third quarter. But Walz wasn’t thinking about the score or opponent. He was thinking about the kind of execution and discipline that will required Thursday against UConn – and beyond.

“If you want to be great, you can’t play the scoreboard,” he said. “You have to keep grinding and battling for 40 minutes. Now that’s tough. But that’s what the great teams do, and that’s what I’m challenging our group to do. . . . I told the players they’re going to watch the game, and they’re going to give us the breakdown of how they played and what they think they need to work on.”

They’re also going to need Durr at 100 percent and playing well. But Walz foresees no problem in that department. She sat as a precaution. She had complained of a sore knee last week, and Walz just wanted to give her time to rest a bit. Because of this week’s UConn game, Louisville will have only one bye week in conference play. He had the luxury of resting her, and took advantage of it.

“She warmed up,” Walz said. “If we had needed her, she would have played. But I just thought it was the best thing. . . . She’s been playing a ton of minutes for us.”

Before a KFC Yum! Center crowd of 10,067, Louisville got 16 points and seven rebounds from Dana Evans and 12 points and seven boards from Kylee Shook.

Louisville overwhelmed Pitt with defensive pressure for the entire first half, gave up only three field goals, and rebounded all but two of the Panthers’ misses. Turnovers helped stall the Cardinals in the second half, but the ACC door was cracked open a bit by Notre Dame’s loss to North Carolina. Now, N.C. State sits alone and unbeaten in league play.

But for now, all eyes turn to a non-conference test for the Cardinals, who are 1-17 against the Huskies, and haven’t beaten them in Walz’z tenure. A year ago, they lost 69-59 in Storrs, Conn.

Walz said his players will be up for the game, but he doesn’t think they’ve spent much time thinking about it up to now.

“I don’t think they’ve thought about it until today, because we’ve had so many games to worry about, you just play them one at a time,” Walz said. “But we’ll be excited, no question about it. UConn’s going to be excited. It’s going to be a big game for both of us. I’m hoping to be able to get 16,000-18,000 in this place and have a great environment and hopefully we play well and they play well and it’s a great game for women’s basketball. It’s a team we’re like, 0-62 against, since I’ve been here. There’s a lot of excitement about it, but at the same time no matter what happens on Thursday, we’ve got to turn around in a quick turnaround to go play at Clemson on Saturday.”

Copyright 2019 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.

[ericcrawford]

Calipari says Pitino and UK fans should bury the Big Blue hatchet

Rick Pitino has moved on with life, to some degree. He still wants to coach. You’d better believe, he still can coach. More than a year after his firing by the University of Louisville, no smoking gun has been discovered, no witness to say he orchestrated many of the things for which he is being punished.

If anything, he is in basketball exile because a program imploded – off the court – on his watch. That’s enough for most athletics directors and general managers to be wary. And that's quite understandable.

Maybe time will ease that reluctance. In the meantime, he is doing a podcast (latest guest, Lesley Visser), he is visiting programs that invite him to come in, meeting with coaches and players, and waiting for lifelines back into the game.

Who would have thought, one such overture would come from Kentucky? The school honored the 1993 Final Four team during Saturday’s victory over Utah. Two key people from that group, however, were missing. Jamal Mashburn couldn’t come. And Rick Pitino had some family things going on and couldn’t come. But there’s also been some concern in the past over whether he should.

It’s a tough decision. Do you go back, knowing that whatever the crowd’s response is – good or bad – is going to be the story, your return will be the story, swallowing up what the event was supposed to be about in the first place.

Nonetheless, UK coach John Calipari reached out to Pitino and encouraged him to come back. And Pitino, on Saturday, Tweeted out his support of the 1993 team and thanked Calipari for his offer.

After Kentucky beat Utah 88-61, Calipari was asked about the whole thing, and said he thinks Pitino should come back, and that he thinks fans will react with appreciation.

“He was with family and he had things going on. But you know, I just said, ‘Look, you need to get up here.’ They will be respectful here, and you know, what that program did to change this back, you know, I mean, we should recognize it,” Calipari said. “They may be mad he went to coach at Louisville. So what? When he was here and when we needed this program on a different track, he put it, and that (1993) group -- and I thanked that group last night: ‘You guys got this thing back going, you guys did.’

“You know, I just, like I said, I'd like him to come back and let him -- you know, one of the happiest things for me is when I see how Coach (Joe B.) Hall is treated here. He's treated like royalty. I love it when he goes out on the court. I love to see him in practice and I love how our fans treat him.”

Calipari said he thinks time will heal any wounds between Pitino and the fan base. His thought on that isn’t without merit. Who would have thought Hall and Crum would’ve wound up with a radio show together and become such good friends.

Maybe things with Pitino are different, but Calipari said he still thinks it’s worth considering a thaw.

“My guess is, back in the day, they probably weren't as friendly, okay, (to Hall),” Calipari said. “But now they look at it and say, you know what, who would have followed Adolph Rupp? Who is stupid enough to do that? He was. He went to Final Fours, won national titles. Think about it. And now, what Rick did, you know, like I said, he deserves to be able to, you know, get the respect from what he did here, and I think our fans would be great. You know, he may not think that, but I'm convinced that if he came back, that the fans would be great to him.”

[ericcrawford]

IMAGE GALLERY | Indiana-Butler in the Crossroads Classic, Dec. 15, 2018.

[ericcrawford]

Phantastic Phinish: Phinisee’s buzzer-beater leads IU past Butler

INDIANAPOLIS – In this young season, the scouting report on the Indiana University basketball team should have this nugget in bold print, all caps, underlined (twice): When you have the Hoosiers down, you’d better not rest.

The heart-attack Hoosiers attacked again in the late going against in-state rival Butler, erasing an nine-point deficit in the final nine minutes and prevailing on a 35-foot buzzer-beater by point guard Rob Phinisee to stun the Bulldogs 71-68.

As Phinisee’s shot swished through, teammates mobbed him at midcourt and swallowed him up, dragged him in a scrum to the opposite free-throw lane, dogpiled on him in a corner, and smiled all the way back to Bloomington with their fourth consecutive win of three points or less.

“Our guys, for whatever reason, keep finding ways to muddy it up,” Indiana coach Archie Miller said. “We keep feeling the same ways in these huddles late in games. Some days it’s the same guys, sometimes it’s different. . . . Rob obviously will be the hero, but Juwan Morgan had as good a game as I’ve been involved in in a long time.”

Morgan was unstoppable inside and out. He finished with a career-high 35 points, was 12-14 from the field, 4-6 from three-point range and 7-7 from the line. He was the main reason Indiana was in the game after being outscored 14-3 off turnovers through the first 34 minutes. Oh, and he also became the 53rd IU player to cross the 1,000-point threshold.

Butler coach LaVall Jordan, asked about Morgan, decided understatement was the way to go.

“If he’s hitting threes, he’s a real problem,” Jordan said. “We know how good he is inside. He got a lot of work done in there. But if he’s hitting free throws, and then he stepped out and hit some threes. I think it was just his competitive will, and you love to have guys like that.”

Indiana came up short on three straight chances to take the lead with around six minutes to play, and finally went ahead on a Morgan layup, the last of six straight points he scored, to go up 66-64 with 3:05 to play.

Still, it came down once again to the final possession. In a timeout with 18 seconds left, Miller drew up a play to set a screen and get freshman Romeo Langford the ball. Butler wasn’t about to allow it.

“They definitely blew the play up,” Miller said. “We weren’t strong enough to execute it and couldn’t get the ball where we wanted to, and that’s something we’ll have to keep working on.”

From his standpoint on the court, Phinisee’s analysis was a bit more blunt.

“Obviously, it wasn’t drawn up like that,” he said. “ . . . Just threw it up, and prayed to God it went in.”

Prayers do sometimes get answered. In fact, they’ve been answered quite a bit lately where the Hoosiers are concerned.

“We’d like to get some that don’t come down to the last 10 seconds,” Morgan said. “Gut at the same time it’s these that you grind out that feel the best.”

Langford finished with 13 points and a team-best seven rebounds in the game. Phinisee finished with nine.

Butler was led by Sean McDermott with 20 points and Kamar Baldwin added 16.

[ericcrawford]

Remembering Louisville’s 2009 women’s hoops NCAA finalists

It was late March, 2009, and it wasn’t just any March. Most of us thought we’d be covering the University of Louisville men heading to the Final Four. Instead, Michigan State had other plans. And then there was a bit of news at Kentucky, where John Calipari was being hired as basketball coach.

The last thing I thought I’d ever be focused on that March – or any March, to be honest -- was a Louisville women’s basketball team going to the Final Four. But after the men lost to Michigan State, something in my head said I’d better get down to Raleigh, N.C., where the women were about to play Maryland in an NCAA Regional final.

I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it was an editor. Or maybe Jeff Walz put something subliminal into my subconscious.

U of L will honor that team at halftime of the No. 4-ranked Cardinals 11:30 a.m. game against Northern Kentucky in the KFC Yum! Center on Saturday. And my thoughts can’t help but go back to that time.

I remember being tired but going, on very little sleep, to Raleigh. I know Jody Demling of The Courier-Journal was down there for the newspaper, too. I don’t know if many other media were. There were maybe 200 fans down there on the night of March 30 to witness history, the Louisville women trouncing top-seeded Maryland 77-60, to earn a berth in the Final Four in St. Louis.

It was heady stuff. Looking at Walz and his program now, it’s easy to forget where it came from, the days of playing home games in the gym at Manual High School – and even more modest beginnings than that. It’s been in my lifetime, the late 1960s, that the U of L women were only allowed to practice three days a week with rest every 15 minutes because it was believed they couldn’t handle a more “rigorous routine.”

So a lot of us were wandering around the court in Raleigh in a state of shock. One of those people was Tom Jurich. I didn’t see him shed too many tears in his tenure as athletic director. But he was emotional in that moment. We had some differences over the football coach about that time, but I congratulated him, because without him, no way that moment ever happens.

He was the guy who insisted the women’s games be moved into Freedom Hall. He went and got coach Tom Collen, who recruited much of that first Final Four team, and then took a chance on Walz after Collen left.

And then there was Walz, in just his second season. Yes, he had the best player in the country in Angel McCoughtry. And he had a player who was better than anyone realized in Candyce Bingham. And he had the nation’s most unorthodox point guard in Des Byrd.

There was Keshia Hines, who played through the death of her grandmother. And Becky Burke, who drove Walz crazy, and now is a coach with players of her own who drive her crazy. Gwen Rucker started for the Cardinals and she was a volleyball player. Walz used to let her start and Hines come in behind her because Hines didn’t want to start. Once, Rucker made it through the first TV timeout of the game and the rest of the team celebrated like it had won a championship.

“They just figured it out,” Walz said. “We used to laugh all the time as a staff. Even at the Final Four in St. Louis, we had colleagues come to the open and closed practices, and they’d ask, ‘How in the world are you guys still playing?’ We would call ourselves the Bad News Bears. But one thing I can say is that when the lights came on, these kids showed up and played.”

Nobody played like McCoughtry. Her jersey hangs in the rafters at the KFC Yum! Center for a reason. She was the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA Draft. She has won two Olympic Gold Medals. She’s the best player ever to put on a Louisville women’s uniform. She was great offensively, rewriting the program’s record book. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that she also was probably the best defensive player in the nation, too.

Doug Bruno, then the coach at DePaul, told Walz that McCoughtry was the only player of which he would tell his team, “If she’s on the right side of the court, start the offense on the left.”

She was the start of everything, Walz said, and remains a prominent part of the program today. When recruits come in they don’t have to ask whether they can achieve their dreams at Louisville. McCoughtry went first in the WNBA Draft, played for an Olympic team, has built a professional career inside of basketball and out, and has her name in the rafters. She got to play in a national championship game.

“The impact Angel had, not just on the game, but on our team, you can’t overstate it,” Walz said.

Walz told that team that if it got through its early round games in Baton Rouge, La., he would get them the rest of the way to a Final Four. Darned if he didn’t.

“That night we beat Maryland, a place I’ve got a lot of fond memories with, that’s a game and a moment that, when I look back, it’s very vivid in my memory,” Walz said. “Not just because of the win but because of some situations we had that weekend. Des Byrd banged up her knee and came back out and wanted to play. Keisha Hines’ grandmother had passed the night of our Sweet 16 game, and we told her we’d fly her back home, this was just a basketball game. And she said she wanted to remember her grandmother the way she’d seen her two weeks before, and this team was her family now. A lot of these players gave a lot to make that such a special year.

“Candyce Bingham was a player who I never had to run anything for. She would just always figure out a way to score and rebound. And then there was Becky Burke. She just drove me crazy. It was one dribble and pickup. One dribble pickup. And then she started to figure it out, and she made some big shots for us. . . . And that’s why it means so much to have so many of them coming back.

McCoughtry will be back in town for Saturday’s game, as will other members of the team. The ceremony will be at halftime of the game, and Walz said he’ll keep his current team out of the locker room for it. He wants them to see what that team meant.

Beyond the players, I remember so many others who followed that team. Jim Kelch, the radio play-by-play announcer, went on to work with the Cincinnati Reds. Jared Stillman, a manger for that team whose Walz imitation sounded (almost) more like Walz than Walz did himself, hosts a sports talk radio show in Nashville.

“It’s going to be a special day to honor a team that kind of got this thing going. It was a team that allowed people to believe that Louisville women’s basketball could be prominent on a national stage. And there’s no doubt, for the past 10 years, that we’ve been able to do that. . . . I hope we have a good turnout.”

They deserve one.