2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament: Louisville vs California

A bad NCAA Tournament for the Big East got worse, if that was humanly possible. A horrible regular season suddenly doesn't sting so much for the members of the Pac-10 Conference.

It must be March.

Friday night in Jacksonville, Fla., one conference attained perfection in the first round of this year's Big Dance. No, it certainly wasn't a Big East that's taken massive hits left and right in the round of 64. As though the shocking exits of Georgetown, Notre Dame and Marquette weren't enough, Louisville also departed before the second round arrived. On a night when tip-off time was delayed at least 20 minutes by a clock malfunction at Veterans Memorial Arena, the Cardinals evidently weren't summoned to the court in time for a collision with the California Golden Bears.

Coach Rick Pitino's team might have existed in body, but it sure didn't seem present in spirit. Not at the beginning of this contest, at any rate.

Before anyone's seat was warm for the final first-round game of the day in North Florida, Coach Mike Montgomery's Cal crew had accumulated a 22-4 lead. With Louisville throwing up bad shots and typically frustrating point guard Edgar Sosa leading UL into one poorly-conceived possession after another (while, by the way, picking up two quick fouls and being hampered by foul trouble all night long), the Bears - regular-season champions of America's most-maligned power conference - grew wide-eyed with anticipation and promptly cashed in on their good fortune.

Cal is not a terrific defensive team, but if the Bears can get out in transition and enable star guard Jerome Randle to operate in the open court, they become an explosive outfit. One didn't have to do much of any guesswork to understand how the good-news Bears rolled to an 18-point lead in the first 6:45 of this contest.

Whether it was Randle (21 points), Theo Robertson (21 points), or Patrick Christopher (17 points), Cal's main scorers and shooters got clean looks at the goal with free shooting hands as a result of Louisville's torrent of bad shots, which precipitated numerous run-outs and fast breaks by the eighth-seeded Bears. The ninth-seeded Cardinals simply didn't value the basketball or exercise any due care with the rock; Cal - a fortunate at-large selection for this tournament given its lack of resume-enhancing wins - was good enough and smart enough to take advantage, as a Berkeley-based bunch should be.

Louisville did make a couple runs to make this game competitive. Pitino's pupils pulled within six (34-28) late in the first half, and after Cal re-established a double-digit lead in the second half, the Cardinals roared back to narrow a large deficit to 62-58 with 7:28 remaining.

However, the energy and concentration UL used to regain competitive parity was just not something the Cards could continue. A team that has been up and down all year, and which has frustrated Pitino to no end, couldn't close the sale in Jacksonville.

After UL's Rakeem Buckles (the only consistent Cardinal on the night, with 10-of-11 field goal shooting) scored a layup at the 6:36 mark, the boys from the Big East went six full minutes without scoring so much as a single point. Needless to say, there's never a good time for a scoring drought of that scope and scale, but the end of a game is the worst time of all. A skilled offensive team such as Cal was able to post points at the other end, and this 8-9 game ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.

WHAT'S NEXT

Cal moves on to face top-seeded Duke late Sunday afternoon. The Blue Devils used a lot of defense to coast past Arkansas-Pine Bluff in round one. If the Golden Bears want to pull an upset, they're going to have to rely on what got them to this point: The long-distance shooting of Randle, Christopher, and Co. If Mike Montgomery's men make long-distance shots and extend Duke's defense, Cal can begin to break down Duke's guards on the dribble and create a high-scoring game in which the ACC champions could be hard-pressed to keep up.

NCAA Tournament First Round Recap - Louisville vs California

WHAT'S NEXT