The Floyd Street Tribune: Well, it's Groundhog Day again
Inside: If last week called for flowers, what does this week call for?
Thanks so much for sticking with me through a difficult season. Miss the previous newsletter? We gave U of L its flowers for getting its first ACC win. That feels like an eternity ago.
Sometime during Tuesday’s game, I found myself having flashes of deja vu. The disparate performances, highlighted by Pitt’s destruction of a win, reminded me of six years ago when Louisville absolutely pulverized Pitt, 106-51, in the very same building in what was the most lopsided conference win for a road team in ACC history.
Wandering that night into the visitors’ locker room — which, like most visitors’ locker rooms, is a compact space that feels like a living room with 15 cubbies in a U-shape — the shock among Louisville’s players was evident. They flat-out could not believe what they’d just done, to the point of giggling because they didn’t know what else to do.
I leaned onto Anas Mahmoud’s locker and said to him and Deng Adel, “You guys didn’t have to do my alma mater like that.” Of course I was joking. “You went here?” Adel asked. Yes, I confirmed. Their response? A collective wide-eyed expression that really only means “oof” and everyone knows it.
On Tuesday night, I thought again about that game — about how Louisville just made everything, how Pitt looked completely lost, how the two programs felt like they were in completely different universes. That was rock bottom for Pitt basketball, a sign of the misery that would ensue through the rest of Kevin Stallings’s brutal two-year spell at a once-proud program.
I believed Louisville was past the rock-bottom moments, even after going 1-3 through a four-game stretch of winnable matchups. I was wrong. And we all let out a collective oof at the end. What else can we do at this point?