Resilient Louisville Cardinals Find Strength, Unity After Off-Court Strife

When senior guard Chris Jones was kicked off the Louisville team on Feb. 22, it could have derailed the Cardinals' season and ripped apart the team. Days after his dismissal, Jones pleaded not guilty to criminal charges of the rape and sodomy of two women.

“Definitely heartbreaking,” said senior starting forward Wayne Blackshear, “knowing your teammate was in a situation you couldn’t do anything about.”

“A bad situation,” said coach Rick Pitino.

The stunning news came just as Louisville entered the home stretch of a promising year. The Cardinals were ranked No. 12 in the nation. Jones led the team in assists (3.7 per game) and was third in scoring (13.6 PPG). 

Instead of folding, Louisville has transformed from question mark to contender heading into its matchup with ACC rival N.C. State in Syracuse Friday.

Players say they grew closer in Seattle. They relished their time there because they could leave distractions behind in Louisville. They hung out in each other’s rooms. Went out to dinner. Played video games and Uno.

“It’s just us,” said David Levitch, a sophomore guard from Goshen, Kentucky. “We don’t have any fans, any family that’s really here. It’s just all us. It really helped a lot.”

Team chemistry, a problem earlier in the year, improved before the tournament’s start.

"It's great now," Pitino told the Louisville Courier-Journal before the team left town for the tournament. “They had to get to know each other. I had to cut out the trash-talking, had to cut out the belittling of young players."

Louisville, which reached a school-record fourth straight Sweet 16, went 3-2 after Jones’ expulsion, including losses to Notre Dame and North Carolina.

Before the tournament started, Pitino, the second-winningest coach via percentage in the NCAA tournament (.753, 52-17 record), said the Cardinals’ outcome could go either way.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if we made a Final Four run,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we got knocked out early.”

Right now, it looks more former than latter. Coming in as a fourth seed in Seattle, Louisville held off an unconventional California-Irvine team that featured crowd-favorite 7'6" center Mamadou Ndiaye, 57-55. While that second-round victory galvanized them, the 66-53 defeat of No. 11-ranked Northern Iowa inspired.

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“We have been through a lot this year,” said Terry Rozier, the guard who led the team in scoring this year. “Ups and down. It shaped us for this moment, for this actual tournament. We’re probably not a great team right now, but as these games dig in and get tight, we all lean on each other like we did (against Irvine).”

The team is young. The 13-man roster features just one senior, Blackshear, who played on the Cardinals’ national championship team in 2013. He scored his 1,000th career point against Northern Iowa and is the only Cardinal in Louisville’s rich history to reach four Sweet 16s.

Other starters are guards Rozier, a junior, and freshman Quentin Snider, along with junior forward Montrezl Harrell and sophomore center Mangok Mathiang.

Snider, called on to fill Jones’ big shoes, has taken the biggest leap since the tournament started. He’s getting a grip on Louisville’s complicated and changing defensive schemes.

“It is my first NCAA tournament,” said Snider. “You know, just try to be confident.”

Coming in with a 9.6-point scoring average since becoming a starter, Snider had 10 points against Northern Iowa and a career-high 16 points in his breakout game against Cal-Irvine, when he sank two free throws with nine seconds left to win it.

“He picked a good day to grow up,” Rozier said of Snider’s career game.

Relentless defense is expected of Pitino-coached teams. Louisville befuddled Northern Iowa by toggling different zone defenses with man-to-man. Led by 6'10", 220-pound Mathiang, they played more physically too.

The opposition took notice. 

“Even after (we) blow past one guy, there’s going to be another guy rotating,” said UNI star Seth Tuttle. “They change a lot of shots at the rim. You don’t get much easy.”

Louisville is now finding its way on offense too. When Harrell and Rozier had off nights against Cal-Irvine, Snider picked it up. When Blackshear scored only 10 points against UNI, Rozier poured in a game-high 25.

The 6'8", 240-pound Harrell and Rozier, both likely first-round NBA draft picks, are clicking for devastating alley-oops.

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

"Montrezl is a warrior," Pitino said. "You see all these dunks. We see 15 of them every practice were we say, 'Get out of the way or somebody’s getting hurt.'"

Not only is the team gathering steam, but Louisville also finds itself in a declawed East region. The draw has opened up for Louisville, with both top-seeded Villanova and No. 2 seed Virginia gone.

As hard as it would have been to believe a month ago, the Cardinals are just two very winnable games away from a spot in the Final Four.

Pitino said his team is not as good as Louisville teams of the past three years, each of which had 30-win seasons, but “we’re still good.”

This year’s squad is 26-8, but there’s something to be said for momentum, and program DNA. Louisville has reached the Elite Eight four times in the last seven seasons (2008, 2009, 2012, 2013). Pitino is fourth among active coaches in tournament victories.

Name	School	Wins
Mike Krzyzewski	Duke	84
Roy Williams	Kansas, North Carolina	67
Jim Boeheim	Syracuse	53
Rick Pitino	Providence, Kentucky, Louisville	52
Tom Izzo	Michigan State	44

For the Cards to advance, his next one will have to come against a familiar foe, NC State. The Wolfpack beat host Louisville, 75-64, on Feb. 14, prior to Jones’ arrest.

“It wasn’t one of our best games,” Blackshear said. “We kind of struggled a little bit. We’re ready for them.”

When Jones was dismissed, Pitino didn’t sugarcoat it.

“Basically what I told the guys (is), 'Chris is our best shooter, our best defensive player, our toughest guy in the backcourt,’” he said. “'So if you think our freshman Quentin Snider or anybody else could make up for him leaving, you’re wrong. What we have to do is get more out of Montrezl, more out of Terry, more out of Wayne, more out of our 5s.'

“I used the statistic of everybody’s got to be 20 percent better than they have been. I think they have.”

For a transformed team, time will tell.

All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.