Granted PK is not in the picture above, the other two are.  Wayne Blackshear & Preston Knowles play for the same team in the ACB in Italy.  This weekend they faced off with other former Cardinal Peyton Siva.  Peyton lost the game but got to hang with the fam. ( Picture below) Read the rest of this entry →

As I was watching the game last night, I kept seeing a Virginia Tech player with the name “Blackshear” on his jersey, and all I could think about was the GOAT (that’s greatest of all time for those who aren’t quite as hip with today’s lingo) Blackshear, the one that truly made it “Wayne” (I am awfully sorry for these terrible puns by the way).  Of course I am talking about the one, the only, Wayne Blackshear.  And well, since its Thursday, I guess you could call this a #TBT (Once again for those who are a little bit older that means Throwback Thursday). 

It was a nice night for former Cardinals in the NBA Summer League on Sunday, and a former Notre Dame player continued the tradition of getting dunked on by a Louisville player.  Montrezl Harrell made his summer league debut, Terry Rozier led the Celtics in scoring, and Wayne Blackshear made the most of his minutes last night.  Here is how they did…

Yesterday was a pretty eventful day for former Louisville Cardinals in the NBA Summer League.  Russ Smith hit a game winning shot against Peyton Siva’s team, and Terry Rozier led the Celtics in scoring.  Not a bad day.  Here are the stats…

There are six former Louisville Cardinals participating in the NBA Summer League: Russ Smith, Peyton Siva, Earl Clark, Terry Rozier, Wayne Blackshear, and Montrezl Harrell.  Here is just a little update on how the guys have done that have begun playing. 

Russ Smith – Memphis Grizzlies

Through two games with the Memphis Grizzlies, Russ is off to a very good start.  The summer league is usually where guys are trying to show that they belong in the NBA by scoring…a lot.  You won’t find too much passing.  For someone who can score at will, Russ is making the effort to pass the ball.  He leads the team with 7.5 assists per game.  The next highest is Andrew Harrison at 2.5 per game.  Some other stats:

What we had been hoping for is now official, and that is that Cleveland State’s Trey Lewis has officially decided to transfer to the University of Louisville to play his final college basketball season for Rick Pitino in 2015-16.  It was supposed to be down to Louisville and Ohio State, but the Cards won this battle without Lewis taking his planned visit to see his hometown Buckeyes.  That is pretty nice. 

Lewis is listed at 6’2 and 185 lbs.  He can play either guard position.  That will give the Cards a very good three man rotation between both guard spots with Lewis, Quentin Snider, and Donovan Mitchell.  So looking at it like that, you were going to have a backcourt with a sophomore and a freshman playing the bulk of the minutes.  Now you throw a senior into the mix to bring experience, not to mention he is just a solid basketball player. 

The roster news continues today for the University of Louisville basketball team.  It has been more good than bad, and this news is that freshman Shaqquan Aaron will stay at UofL and not transfer, as some had thought he would do. 

Source tells Scout that Shaqquan Aaron is expected to stay at Louisville.  There were rumors that he may transfer. 

Rick Pitino met with the media on Monday afternoon for almost 30 minutes to wrap up the season, which saddens me.  It is about 8 days too early, but it happens.  He said that Terry Rozier and Montrezl Harrell will both go pro, and also hints that a couple of players could transfer. 

Before I leave on the recruiting trail, we had individual instructions and I missed you guys so I wanted to say goodbye to you one last time.  You know, there’s good and bad in every season, and I’m not going to mislead you and tell you that it doesn’t hurt.  Outside of the Christian Laettner loss, I think this was probably the second most-bitter defeat that we have faced, because, you know when Mangok made that first free throw which shouldn’t have gone in, I said, we’re going to win this thing and for a span of a short period of time all I could think of was, ‘We just have to play defense for four seconds.”  At first there was three-point-something, and they changed it.  And I said all we’ve got to do is play defense for four seconds and we’re in the Final Four, because I was positive the second one would go in after that luck.  And it didn’t go in.  And we missed a lot of free throws down the stretch, a lot of layups down the stretch, and that’s the bad. 

We close in on the season finale of 55.  We talk about Elite 8’s, departures and Villains.  The men’s Tennis team jumps into the top 25.  JamFest and McDonald’s All-American games are this week.  What will I do this summer?  Find out today!  Steve needed a hug on the Podcast today and me and Justin tried our best to console him.  Rebuild or Reload?  Hmm.  All of this and more………. 

Without further adieu, here are the most ridiculous, outlandish, interesting or just downright obnoxious things I have heard this week.  THIS is 55…..

Rick Pitino held his end of the season press conference today, and laid out many potential storylines to keep an eye on.  There are possible players transferring, players being added to the class, and more.  We will post about that stuff later.  What he did say on this topic wasn’t too shocking, and that is that both Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier are “100%” going to leave Louisville to turn pro. 

Well, we’re obviously excited to be in the Sweet 16.  We took a day off yesterday because a West Coast trip knocks a lot out of you.  So today I’m sure we’ll have a little bit of a sluggish practice trying to get our feet back, but I think the adrenalin is going to be very high and we’re looking forward to playing another ACC basketball game, and we know how good NC State is because they beat us by 8-10 points at home.  Not too many teams do that and they did it.  We also realize they’ve won 8 out of 10, their frontcourt’s playing extremely well and their backcourt’s playing outstanding and they’ve beaten some pretty damn good teams on their court.  We know it will be a hard-fought game, it’s not only an outstanding team we’re playing, but there’s a lot at stake. 

We close in on the season finale of 55.  We talk about the Cards trips to Seattle and Tampa.  Sweet 16 and National Champions?  Yeah we got those too.  We talk about everything in the world of Cardinal Athletics and I do mean EVERYTHING.  We talk the latest episodes of the Cardinal Sports Zone podcasts which you can find at CardinalSportsZone.com/podcast (Cheap Pop).  We ask again, what’s next in the ever-changing world of 55?  We let you continue to teas you later after many weeks of clues.  WAYNE 1K!  just as I told you…. 

Without further adieu, here are the most ridiculous, outlandish, interesting or just downright obnoxious things I have heard this week.  THIS is 55…..

COACH PITINO: Well, I couldn’t be more pumped up, more excited because we beat such a great team.  Sometimes I hate these press conferences because you listen to the other guys up here first and you just bleed for a group like Northern Iowa, who the reason we played so well tonight is the amount of respect we had for them.  We knew they were a great team, statistically, five seniors, we know they’re beautifully coached, so sometimes it breaks your heart even in victory.  We are so pumped and so excited because we know the feeling on the other end, but for us, this is the first time in history, according to go Kenny Klein, that this is four Sweet 16s in a row.  And Louisville’s had a very rich tradition.  So we’re very proud of that. 

These two guys kind of amazed me, because I prod them the whole game because I can’t take them out.  Montrezl was just working so hard and he was so dead, and I kept saying: You got to give us more, son.  You got to give us more.  You can’t tire.  And I don’t know how they do it, I really don’t know how both of them do it, but they have done it the whole year.  They have carried a team on their back that it has many problems and tonight we played our best game of the season.  Defensively we did a lot of good things, switching from zone to man, back to zone, back to man.  And then offensively, that’s the best we have executed with swinging the ball, east to west, and then attacking north to south.  So I’m real proud of these guys.  Two guys that are going to go on to — I won’t say greener — I could say greener pastures, because they probably will be, but they’re tremendous basketball players.  It’s been an honor to coach both of them. 

The Louisville Cardinals will be making their fourth straight trip to the Sweet 16 after beating Northern Iowa 66-53 on Sunday night in Seattle.  Their opponent in Syracuse, New York will be NC State, who beat the Cards 74-65 at the KFC Yum!  Center back on February 14 of this year. 

Terry Rozier had himself a game, scoring 25 points on 8-13 shooting while going 8-9 from the free throw line.  He also dished out 7 assists and grabbed 5 rebounds and carried the Cards in this victory.  This was the “first round draft pick” version of Rozier that we have not seen in quite some time.  If he wants to continue to play like this, I will approve.