Pitino keeping it simple for No. 20 Louisville

By WILL GRAVES
AP Sports Writer

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Rick Pitino is arguably one of the most
meticulous strategists in college basketball, bombarding his
Louisville players with offensive sets.

It could overwhelm even the most experienced of teams, but
Pitino believed it was a necessary process to prepare the
Cardinals for Big East play. But it also led to some pretty ugly
basketball, particularly in November.

“My teams are very tough to watch the first few games of the
season,” Pitino admitted.

So are the results.

The Cardinals (1-0) have stubbed their toes in November in seven
of Pitino’s eight seasons on the sideline.

Last year, Louisville was ranked No. 3 when Western Kentucky
dominated the Cardinals in Nashville. Two years ago, they fell
to BYU in Las Vegas. Three years ago, Dayton knocked them off
the day after Thanksgiving.

The only time Louisville, under Pitino, escaped November
unscathed was 2005, when the Cardinals played only one game
before the calendar flipped to December.

With a team searching for a new identity after stars Earl Clark
and Terrence Williams left for the NBA, this November looked to
be perhaps even tougher than usual until Pitino had an epiphany
of sorts over the summer.

Maybe, he figured, less is more when you’re coaching a team
filled with eight freshmen and sophomores.

So instead of inundating the Cardinals with detailed plays from
the day practice started, he asked them to push the ball
instead. Rather than put together a dozen offensive sets he
expected to be executed flawlessly from the get-go, he has kept
the playbook basic.

“I just tried to evaluate why we’re not good early on, and I
think I put too much in,” he said.

Keeping it simple paid off in a remarkably easy 30-point win
over short-handed Arkansas on Tuesday.

The Cardinals knocked down 15 3-pointers, took only a handful of
challenged shots – one of Pitino’s biggest sticking points – and
responded immediately when Arkansas closed within two points
early in the second half.

“It’s the best we’ve looked in an opening game since I’ve been
here,” he said.

By limiting the playbook to five basic sets, he’s been able to
spend more time in practice going through the options of each
play instead of hustling from one scheme to the next.

“I think it’s just the result of us putting very few things in
and getting better at what we put in earlier in the year,”
Pitino said.

Besides, if the Cardinals are going to defend their Big East
championship, Pitino knows the fewer plays they call the better.
He’d prefer it if Louisville is too busy getting points in
transition to worry too much about where the ball needs to go in
the halfcourt.

So would his players.

“He wants us to get out and push it and not slow it down because
we’re so deep and we’ve got a lot of guys that can play,” said
sophomore forward Kyle Kuric.

The Cardinals used that depth to wear down the Razorbacks, and
they’ll need it this weekend when they play East Tennessee
State, Morgan State and Appalachian State as part of the Hall of
Fame Showcase at Freedom Hall.

Playing three games in three days isn’t Pitino preference as the
short turnarounds don’t allow for much gameplanning.

That might not necessarily be a bad thing. At least for now.

Kuric admitted being overwhelmed as a freshman by the various
interpretations of a given play.

“It’s hard to realize when they call out a play you have to know
exactly what to do, you can’t sit there and think about it,”
Kuric said. “So you just have to kind of go on reaction and do
it that way.”

The playbook will get more detailed as the season wears on, but
Pitino is encouraged by what he’s seen.

There will still be mistakes – Pitino is still waiting for
sophomore center Samardo Samuels to start asserting himself in
the paint – but Pitino can live with them if the Cardinals make
shots and play with the kind of intensity that marked their
second-half surge by the Razorbacks.

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