2010 Louisville Cardinals Basketball: Louisville vs Syracuse

The Louisville Cardinals needed to sweep the team currently ranked No. 1 in the United States of America on Saturday in order to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament. In a situation where a loss would have put them on the bubble heading into the Big East Tournament next week in New York, the Cards needed to come up right in a game of high-stakes poker against the regular season champion from Syracuse.

It turns out that Louisville had a very special Card in the deck on an historic and memorable afternoon in the commonwealth of Kentucky.

Kyle Kuric - a 6-foot-4, 190-pound sophomore from Evansville, Ind. - had not been much of a presence for Louisville this season. That's putting it charitably, too. The lanky youngster was so shaky to this point in his UL career that Pitino openly felt he had made a fundamental misjudgment on the recruiting trail. Kuric was averaging just 13 minutes a game entering this Saturday showdown, and he had scored only six points in all of January, with just 28 total points throughout the entire month of February.

That's right - this player who owned a very minor role on the Louisville bench, and who had barely made any dent on the stat sheet in the 2009-2010 campaign, had scored just 34 total points over the past two months. Not games, not weeks, but months. Kuric wasn't a part of Syracuse's pregame scouting report, or surely not a central one, at any rate. Big man Samardo Samuels, sharpshooter Jerry Smith, slasher Preston Knowles, and point guard Edgar Sosa had to occupy the attention of Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim.

Kyle Kuric? Who's he?

Now the Orange know... and so does America.

With 14:30 left in this contest - the final Louisville game ever to be played at venerable Freedom Hall, one of college basketball's great cathedrals - Kuric hadn't scored a point. Syracuse led, 42-39, and the Cardinals' NCAA hopes were very much in jeopardy.

Then, this unassuming figure emerged from the pine - partly because Smith, a starter, suffered an injury earlier in the game - and proceeded to produce a Clark Kent-to-Superman transformation.

A modest fellow in a phone booth became a superhero who flew through the air and performed various feats of athletic excellence. In the final 14:30 of regulation, Kuric hit 4 of 6 3-pointers, crammed down numerous dunks in transition off alley-oop passes, and basically became a one-man wrecking crew. After doing absolutely nothing for the first 25:30 of this titanic and emotional tilt, Kuric finished the game with 22 points on 9-of-11 field goal shooting. The preposterous and jaw-dropping display of dominating basketball from Kuric powered a Louisville offense that has been seeking a reliable perimeter shooter throughout the year. Finally turbocharged at the offensive end of the floor, the Cards scored 48 points in the second half and actually pulled away - yes, pulled away - from the Orange, who simply didn't shoot well from 3-point range (4 of 16) or from the foul line (10 of 19).

All because of Kyle Kuric - the unknown who emerged from the shadows just in the nick of time - Louisville should be in the NCAA Tournament unless it loses its opening game in the Big East Tournament and gets some bad breaks in other bubble games around the country.

All because of Kyle Kuric, Louisville closed down Freedom Hall in style.

All because of Kyle Kuric, the Cardinals brought the broom to Syracuse in a two-game season series.

Not a bad day's work for a previously obscure sophomore.

Louisville vs Syracuse Basketball Recap