SB Nation - Weyinmi Efejuku

Samardo Samuels spending the summer leading Team Jamaica in the CBC

Mike Rutherford — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:57:06 -0000

The other four starters? You guessed it: Derice Bannock, Sanka Coffie, Junior Bevil and Yul Brenner.

Samardo Samuels scored a game-high 21 points to lead Team Jamaica to an impressive 107-56 win over a select NBL All-Stars team in the second game of their two-match practice series at the National Arena last Friday.

Andre Smith followed with 18 points and Kimani Friend with 11. Christopher Walker was the top-scorer for the NBL select team with 18 points.

The game drew the curtains in the team's one-week training camp in preparation for the June 30 to July 4 Caricom Basketball Championship (CBC) in Tortola, British Virgin Islands.

Team Jamaica also defeated the NBL side, 96-57, in the first game at the same venue on Tuesday.

The team also boasts Big East standouts Weyinmi Efejuku (Providence) and Mike Coburn (Rutgers), a pair of talented young players whose Jamaicanicity was learned by Mike Rutherford just moments ago.

And you're not the only one to get excited about that, I think the fans here have an extreme case of Jamaican fever.

Al, so do I.

Oh no, no, no, no...so do WE.

Rent Cool Runnings and start reading the blog again.

Big East Tournament live blog: 8) Providence vs. 16) Depaul

Mike Rutherford — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:02:24 -0000

The first round of the Big East Tournament was one of my favorite days on the basketball calendar even during the years Louisville was running around in the Metro and C-USA. Obviously the second (or third) Wednesday in March has become even more enjoyable now that the Cards are among the teams taking the floor inside Madison Square Garden.

The first game of the 2009 slate of Wednesday games will determine who the top-seeded Cardinals face tomorrow at the same time.

It's eight-seeded and bubble ridden Providence taking on the perhaps the least likely team in the country to be playing today, No. 16 Depaul, a squad which went winless over the 18-game Big East regular season.

Feel free to join in the fun via the comments section or with an email to MikeRuth5@aol.com.

Let's hit it.

12:02 - We're here live from the Card Chronicle Compound (not Headquarters) and ready for an opening tilt that will lack the excitement of the 8/9 games of previous years unless Depaul can play above its head again.

Dan Schulman is here, Len Elmore is here, Mike Rutherford is sitting on a couch in Louisville. It's go time.

12:06 - Six shots, six misses and I'm pretty sure they've all been wide left....interesting?

12:07 - Weyinmi Efejuku finishes an alley-oop for the first made field goal in 11 attempts.

12:09 - Here's hoping our noon game is just a tad more aesthetically pleasing tomorrow.

Friahs up 4-2 at the under 16 timeout.

12:14 - Dar Tucker hasn't missed and has ten points. The Demons can hang if he's having one of his all-world games.

It's Depaul up 12-11 as the pace starts to pick up.

12:16 -Will Walker goes coast-to-coast for an uncontested lay-up and Depaul's up three.

Providence looks like it only had to show up to play tomorrow, and Keno Davis looks like he's ready to decapitate someone.

12:20 - A friend last night guaranteed that Jerry Wainwright would go out and get hammered to celebrate Depaul's first round win. I had my doubts, but Schulman just said that Wainwright is under the weather and "doesn't look like himself."

If Depaul wins and Wainwright inexplicably starts crying and pulls out his cell phone in the middle of tomorrow's game then we'll know for sure.

12:26 - The dream is alive and well in the Garden...Depaul leads 19-13 with ten to play in the half.

12:28 - Depaul has seven offensive boards and zero turnovers while the Friars have given it up six times. PC has to get Efejuku or Curry going. It's 22-16, Demons at the under eight.

12:31 - Dar Tucker really is Wilson Chandler. I almost hate seeing him play this way because you know he's capable of doing it every night, and you know that he's still eventually going to get paid because of his ridiculous talent.

12:35 - Depaul builds a nine-point lead and then shows why it went 0-18 in conference play by turning it over three straight times and letting the lead dip back down to one.

12:38 - Providence has started trying and Depaul has kind of stopped at the same time. It's still the Demons by one, 25-24 at the under four.

12:45 - Depaul's Mario Stula doesn't play for the first 17 minutes of the game and then gets in and buries a pair of treys in about 30 seconds. Demons up 31-29.

12:49 - Sharaud Curry banks in a three to put PC up one at the half.

12:54 - Jerry Wainwright is friggin' pumped.

12:57 - Curry is the game's leading scorer with 16 points, while Will Walker has 13 and Tucker has 10 for Depaul.

1:12 - Walker and Tucker come out firing and Depaul goes back up by three. Surely there's a massive PC run coming sometime between now and the five minute mark.

1:14 - Jerry Wainwright: master of the seemlingly unnecessary early second half timeout. Hey, it's working my man, stick with it.

1:15 - Score updates:

Baylor 28, Nebraska 21 (first half)
St. Louis 26, La Salle 24 (halftime)
Rice 6, Marshall 6

1:18 - Sharaud Curry is in one of his Sharaud Curry zones. He's got 21 and we're tied at 43.

1:20 - Providence isn't playing particularly well, but they're also not insanely lethargic or disinterested. There's just no excuse for this Depaul team with Walker, Tucker and Koshwal going 0-18 and continually dropping games by ridiculous margins in the Big East.

It's 45-45 with just under 14 to play. If you all quit your jobs now you'll probably be able to catch the last nine or ten minutes.

1:24 - Stula's hit seven threes all season and he's knocked down three in just over two minutes of court time this afternoon. Unreal.

1:25 - Walker's a good shooter and an excellent calming force, but he's not a particularly good ball-handler nor is anyone else in blue. I just don't understand why it's taken Providence so long to pick up the press and extend its defense in the halfcourt.

Depaul 51-46 with 12:30 to go.

1:29 - PC is trying to force Tucker to go to his right and he's still scoring. Darquavis has 22 and his team's up 55-53.

This is borderline unbelievable.

1:33 - As entertaining as this is, it's really not good for the conference.

1:37 - Depaul making the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament has officially become a realistic possbility. Tucker's got 25 and the Demons lead by four with eight and-a-half to go.

1:39 - Stula with a huge block on Efejuku. The man has been hustling for five months.

1:39 - Keno Davis gets T'd up in what would seem to be a desperate move by a desperate coach. Depaul up 60-55 with the ball.

1:42 - I realize that Louisville has never lost to Depaul ever (look it up), but I can't help but feel weird, if not nervous, about possibly facing the Demons in the quarterfinals.

1:44 - Mac Koshwal has three fouls and his team has the ball and a four point lead, so the only logical thing for him to do is blatantly shove his man in the face right in front of two officials.

1:46 - Congrats to Wiley Brown and IU Southeast, which opened the NAIA Tournament with a 17-point win this morning.

1:49 - Depaul has had a chance to put this one away at the stripe, but Tucker and Walker have each missed three.

Tucker picks up his fourth foul and Efejuku strokes a pair to make it 62-61 Depaul with six and-a-quarter to go.

1:53 - Jeff Xavier buries a three and Providence finally takes the lead at 64-62. Jonathan Xavier resists the urge to rush the floor.

1:55 - Depaul responds by nearly air-balling a three on a 2-on-1 fast break and then refusing to play any defense.

It's a 15-1 PC run and the Friars lead 70-62.

This one's done, son.

1:57 - You'll always have Tuesday, Jerry.

2:02 -Dar Tucker continues to drive and draw fouls...and then miss free-throws. One-point possessions aren't going to get it done here. Friars by nine with 2:30 to go.

2:04 - Providence shoots just over 60% from the stripe as a team, but Depaul refuses to foul Len says it's because Jerry Wainwright wants his guys to feel this loss...I'm not as sure that this is the case.

2:06 - Dar Tucker has 30 points and Will Walker has 28. Thanks for the help, Mac.

2:08 - Providence 83, Depaul 74 is your final.

The Cards will face a desperate team tomorrow afternoon.

It's grub time.

Louisville 94, Providence 76

Mike Rutherford — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:55:46 -0000

This was a very encouraging win on a number of levels.

First, we couldn't have asked for a better time to have six different guys score in double figures. After seven straight sub-par offensive halves, Louisville really needed these last two games to restore some confidence heading into a pair of road contests against teams that would just as soon see the score stay in the low 60s or 50s. Facing a poor defensive team means little if you're not knocking down the surrendered open shots, but the Cards have flirted with triple-digits in consecutive games, a welcome change after four straight sub-70-point efforts.

Hours before tip, I stated that Providence was one of the few teams in the league capable of matching Louisville's depth, and that the Cardinal guards would be unable to wear down the Friars as a result.

Papa slips up every now and then.

The Cards said to the country last night that even if you have the same number of players playing the same number of minutes, we're going to own the end of the second half because we're in better shape than you are.

When Sharaud Curry hit consecutive jumpers to give the Friars a 53-50 lead early in the second half, it looked as if the score-first floor general was on the verge of one of his unconscious outbursts. Instead, it was the last field goal he'd net.

After shooting 75% from the field and 4-of-7 from behind the three-point line in the first half, PC connected on just 30% of their shots in the second half, and missed their last 11 three-point attempts. The low point came when a gassed Brian McKenzie missed a wide-open trey in the corner by about five feet.

Louisville finished the night with 94 points on 24 assists and nine turnovers, while Providence left Freedom Hall with 76 points on just eight assists and a whopping 22 turnovers, seven more than their season average.

Never underestimate the power of Andre McGee, Preston Knowles and Terrence Williams.

Preston Knowles is absolutely locked in. Even the one deep three he missed was right on line, and Knowles looked shocked when it didn't drop.

It's crazy what being so confident in your shot will do to the rest of your game. We've never seen Preston do something like go coast-to-coast with the ball in his hands and then drop a no-look bounce pass right on the money the way he did with Terrence Jennings early in the second half Wednesday night. He may be our best offensive guard right now.

Oh yeah, and he made 12 deflections, recorded two steals, blocked a shot and made life a living hell for whichever opposing guard had the ball in his hands every second he was on the floor.

I love him.

Sometime around the first tv timeout of the second half, my dad and I agreed that it had been a surprisingly quiet and well-officiated night from Jim Burr and Ed Hightower.

Let this be a lesson, never praise an individual or group of individuals with a proven track record of atrociousness until they've completed their task in full.

For the next 15 minutes, Hightower posed and yelled unnecessarily while Burr tried to one-up him by whistling a pair of technical fouls, the second even more absurd than the unwarranted first.

The sinner-turned-saint is always going to slip-up, the Clemson Tigers are always going to disappoint down the stretch, and Ed Hightower and Jim Burr are always going to be Ed Hightower and Jim Burr.

After Knowles was whistled for the technical, he had the unenviable task of trying to explain himself to an already perturbed Rick Pitino.

The best part of the whole sequence of events was watching Terrence Williams try to defend the sophomore. Williams watched Knowles give his explanation closely and then stepped in and made the exact same hand-motions Preston had, even though there was no possible way he could have seen what happened from where he was on the floor.

It's what senior captains are supposed to do, and it was pretty cool to see.

So I think it's safe to say T-Will's hurt wrist is feeling better. Just another 17-point, eight assist, 7-of-11 from the floor night.

Obviously, we're going to miss Williams' game next year, but his on-court shenanigans are going to be equally irreplaceable. Who else is going to grab a ball that had been wedged in the rim for five seconds, dunk it, and then (jokingly?) try to get the referee to count the bucket?

Doris Burke claimed at one point that Williams' personality would get him to the NBA. I'm not a draft guru, agent or franchise executive, but I don't think it works that way.

If Jerry can hit that pump-fake, step back three with some degree of consistency, then it's going to be a huge leap forward for his game. The pump fake has gotten his defender in the air all season long, but his inability to do anything with that extra step has rendered the move essentially meaningless. He's got to find ways to create shots for himself against teams that defend the perimeter well, so this is something I'd work on relentlessly in practice.

I love the way the quartet of guards have banded together to become sort of a team within the team.

This wasn't Edgar Sosa's game (I'm aware that he led the team in scoring) and he accepted that. Even though he didn't see the floor for the first eight minutes of the second half, Good Edgar was standing and applauding right alongside Knowles when Jerry Smith's layup pushed the lead to 61-53.

Each of these guys bring different things to the table (unavoidable cliche), and to see them get behind one another even in games not conducive to their particular strengths is very encouraging.

The importance of group cohesiveness in relation to success cannot be overstated.

Another step in the right direction for Samardo Samuels, who is showing more confidence in his jumper as well as his jump hook in the lane. The wide-open, "should I be dunking this?" lay-up is still an area of concern, however, as is rebounding and staying on the line on free-throw attempts.

Not a concern: having every single one of his dunks captured by each photographer in the building.

If you only followed college basketball through postgame photographs, Samuels would have to be your front-runner for national Player of the Year.

He's grown up a lot since December, but Samuels still needs to take his game to that undefinable next level sometime within the next couple of weeks for this team to be a true title contender.

There isn't a player in the Big East who can match T-Will when it comes to pure athleticism, but Weyinki Efejuku is about as close as you can get. He went right around Williams for an uncontested one-hand slam in the first half, a feat not many can boast about honestly.

Geoff McDermott is soft. Apparently that interview with Marvin Barnes did little to inspire.

Providence has a lot of veteran talent and I do think Keno Davis is a hell of a coach, but there were just too many bad habits still floating around from the Tim Welsh-era for this team to be a true contender.

Davis will get the program back on track, and guiding this group to the dance would be a tremendous first step.

Terrence Jennings: free-throw machine.

We talked before the season about how a really good team could easily go 11-7 or 10-8 in this conference, well, Louisville has 11 wins with five games still remaining on the league slate.

Not that there's anybody among us who doesn't want more, but this group has already accomplished a great deal, and it's put itself in a position to accomplish something tremendous.

I know the rivalry hasn't been what it was since both made the move to the Big East, but Saturday is still Louisville/Cincinnati, and it's still something that means more than just another mid-February conference game both teams would love to have.

Five reasons the Providence game is important for Louisville

Mike Rutherford — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:22:43 -0000

1. It's not quite the Villanova/Notre Dame/Pittsburgh stretch of mid-January, but tonight's game is the first of three against middle-of-the-pack teams every bit as desperate for a big-time win as the Irish were six days ago.

We can debate which of the three is the most dangerous, but the fact is that tonight's game is the only one that will be played in Freedom Hall. Taking a loss against a hungry team in a hostile environment at either Cincinnati or Georgetown would be disappointing, but somewhat understandable. A loss tonight would not.

2. It's not exactly a secret that this team needs Terrence Williams playing his best basketball in order to have any shot at making a run to Detroit. T-Will is reportedly as healthy as he's been since the Connecticut game, so seeing the return of his usual bounce as well as a couple of knocked down jumpers would be a very encouraging sign for the next couple of weeks.

3. Providence is another one of those enjoys scoring but would just as soon not run down to the other end afterward teams that the Cards have struggled with over the last two seasons (Seton Hall, Notre Dame and, to a more extreme extent, North Carolina). Being one of the best defensive teams in the country allows you to hang around with just about anybody, but in order to capture a regular season, tournament or national championship, you're going to have to win at least a game or two with offense, and tonight is an opportunity for Louisville to prove that's something they're capable of doing.

Confidence plays an enormous role in hot shooting, so it'd be nice to see some of the guys who lit it up against Depaul keep the ball rolling (so to speak) this evening.

4. The Friars may actually be the best in the league when it comes to matching Louisville's depth, so this probably isn't going to be one the Cards can win by wearing down the opponent with constant pressure. Efejuku, Curry, Xavier and McKenzie are all very good, so it will be a challenge for U of L to get points off of turnovers without having the luxury of facing a thin backcourt.

5. There's a chance, a chance, that Jonathan Xavier will wander out onto the court and berate an official.

That's not really big for Louisville, but it'd be awesome.