No. 8 California vs. No. 9 Louisville This is an easy “upset” as Louisville has more talent and depth.
What? Easy upset? Not only did Thamel show his own brand of East Coast March Madness (he may not even live in New York, by the way), he wrote a statement that openly invites one to think Cal has no business in the same building as Louisville.
Geez, even Louisville fans are quick to point to their weaknesses. Here's a post found on the Louisville Forum that looks as if it was written for The New York Times:
I think that you're a little off base here. Cal was a pre-season Top 10 team and played Kansas well on the road early in the season. Sure they played in a weak conference, but their resume isn't much worse than ours. Sure our RPI and SOS are solid, but the only tournament teams that we beat were Syracuse and ND. I would be shocked if Cal doesn't give us all that we can handle on Friday. I don't think we have alot of room to be questioning other teams resume's...there were alot of nervous Cards fans at 6:15pm today.
Read up, Pete Thamel. The bet here is egg on your face. How about this evaluation:
To the Cal fan: you will be glad to know that it's been quick guards, not big front lines, that have beat us this year. We try to press as much as possible, especially since we play 10-12 players every game. I dont think we've played a team all year that has played more players than us. We press full court when we make a basket and sometimes like to apply pressure in the half court. Our best D is zone but we switch a lot.
The bigger problem with our team is that we still don't have an identity. We have no go-to player Samuels will get 25 unstoppable points one game and will take two shots the next. Our two wins over Syracuse were led by two players who could go 4 games without playi g a minute and only diehard fans would notice. And if we start a game slowly, we are amazingly bad at getting going. We were absolutely blown out by Marquette and St. John's late in the year due to early droughts. If I were your coach, I would just emulate the Marquette game. Aggressively double-team Samardo when he gets a pass and it will lead to an abundance of turnovers. Get out in transition as much as possible because our transition D is clueless, then work the ball with passes on offense and you will eventually get am open perimeter shot.
One other unique deficiency of our team is an uncanny ability to lose loose balls and rebounds that were right in front of us. We lose at least 4 balls a game when it was right on someone's figertips. I can guarantee this will happen on Friday because it happens literally every game
Something else, the game starts late for Louisville, dinner time for Cal. Here's Pete Thamel's Twitter page so you can give him a hard time on Friday night not to mention all this week: @PeteThamelNYT
Friday night at 7 p.m. PST. Be there. Aloha!
Go Bears!
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