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After the Buzzer: Pittsburgh

By Justin Renck
NCAA Basketball: Louisville at Pittsburgh Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Quick Hitters

-It was good to see the Cards get back on track at Pittsburgh on Tuesday night. Any road win in the ACC is a good one. Let’s knock out some quick hitters and film review and turn our attention to the next game. A little one on Saturday.

-Welcome back, Carlik Jones! He let us all know he had returned when he buried the first three of the night for either team on his way to 11 points. He also dished out seven assists, grabbed four rebounds, and only had two turnovers. He didn’t shoot the ball that well and Chris Mack said that Jones got winded during the game (due to lack of practice lately), but having him back to knock some rust off was huge.

-Carlik coming back also took some pressure off of David Johnson, who played much better than he did against Wisconsin when he probably tried to overcompensate for Jones being out. Johnson had 17 points and 11 rebounds and was dominant down the stretch to help close the game out. Pittsburgh could not stop him on drives to the basket. He was 8/12 from the field and 7/7 on his two-point shots. The six turnovers are still too many, but he took a step in the right direction.

-Joining David Johnson in the double-double department was Samuell Williamson, who finished with 14 points and 12 rebounds. You will see on a couple of the film review plays that Williamson does a really good job of moving without the ball and cutting to the basket. It sounds simple, but doing that as opposed to just standing and watching the ball is a big deal. The defense gets locked in on the ball handler and Sam is able to sneak behind them and get open looks.

-Jae’Lyn Withers and J.J. Traynor battled with Pitt big man John Hugley. He is listed at 240 lbs. While Withers is listed at 230 lbs. (it sure seemed like more than a 10 lb. difference), Traynor is just 200 lbs. They played their butts off and held their own against Hugley. It would have been easy to accept he was just bigger, but they did anything but that and they made him work for everything and even frustrated him at times.

-Louisville won a game where they shot 4/17 from three (23.5%) and 12/21 from the free throw line (57.1%). Not a recipe that I want to see continue. Let’s get those numbers up.

-Speaking of, Quinn Slazinski has GOT to start knocking down some of his open looks. He is 2/16 from three. From two, he is 10/15. With Carlik Jones and David Johnson driving the lane, the threes will be there. But 2/16 just isn’t going to cut it.

-Good to see Josh Nickelberry back on the court and also knocking down a three pointer.

-Louisville had 17 turnovers. Way too many. David Johnson and Sam Williamson had 10 of those. Three of the turnovers were our guys simply stepping on the out of bounds line when they caught the ball. Can’t happen. You can not give up possessions by making mental mistakes like that.

-Pitt’s acting head coach does not understand the whole wearing a mask thing.

-Boxing out was a lot better in this game for the Cards. And that resulted in a 45-26 rebounding edge.

-In summary, it wasn’t a great performance, but a win nonetheless. After the debacle at Wisconsin, we’ll take the victory and move on to Saturday.

-As always, thank you for checking this out. Go Cards!

Film Review

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