Louisville Too Much For Irish, Harangody
No. 13 Cards edge No. 17 Notre Dame despite 40 by star Harangody in key Big East game.
Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody (44) gets a shot off despite defensive pressure by Louisville’s David Padgett during the first half Thursday at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky.
AP photo
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Through the injuries and sometimes inconsistent play that sent Louisville tumbling from the polls more than two months ago, Louisville coach Rick Pitino never doubted the Cardinals would recover.
Now his team is back where Pitino thought it’d be all along: atop the Big East.
David Padgett scored a season-high 26 points and No. 13 Louisville overcame a dazzling performance from Notre Dame center Luke Harangody to post a 90-85 victory over the 17th-ranked Irish on Thursday.
“We never got disappointed in December,” Pitino said. “We never got down and we certainly aren’t going to hug ourselves now.”
Louisville’s eighth straight victory moved the Cardinals (23-6, 13-3 Big East) into a first-place tie with No. 11 Georgetown with two games remaining. Louisville plays Villanova on Sunday and ends the season at Georgetown on March 8.
“This is a great win for us, but we can’t relax,” Padgett said. “We want to finish it like the way we’re playing now. We want to win two more games and win a Big East championship.”
The victory restored some order to one of the nation’s toughest conferences and made a believer out of Notre Dame coach Mike Brey.
“Who’s better in the country?” Brey said. “I don’t know who’s better in the country than them.”
The Cardinals looked among the nation’s best for the game’s first 35 minutes. Louisville never trailed and led 73-54 on Padgett’s layup with 5:41 to play.
Harangody, however, made sure Notre Dame (21-6, 11-4) wasn’t finished. He knocked down the first three 3-pointers of his career in the final 1:32, eventually pulling the Irish within 86-81 with 23 seconds left.
In the end, it wasn’t quite enough to overcome the Cardinals. Earl Clark and Edgar Sosa made four straight free throws in the last 19 seconds to preserve the victory and keep Pitino’s late-season plan for the Cardinals intact.
“We wanted to win eight out of 10 and we’re doing it,” Pitino said. “We’ve secured it with two to go. Now we’ve got two games to go to win a championship.”
It’s a position the Irish hoped they would be in if they found a way to slip by the Cardinals.
Notre Dame had surged to third place in the Big East behind a scarily efficient offense that simply ran by opponents. Louisville, however, slowed the Irish early with a frenetic fullcourt press then held on down the stretch even after Harangody unleashed his latest weapon.
