I can’t remember a weekend in recent memory involving UofL sports that struck so many different emotions: anger, sadness, confusion, happiness, relief, comfort. In true Rick Pitino hyperbole, I will say that this was the craziest weekend in all my years on this planet. (It wasn’t, but hyperbole can be fun) There was the scandal news that broke on Friday, a huge football win on Saturday, and also real live basketball at the KFC Yum! Center on Saturday as well. It was a back-and-forth of emotion.
This is the first chance I have really gotten to get on here and type something out this weekend, other than posting quick videos that don’t take much time to do. I still hope to post something individually for both the football game and basketball scrimmage. The scandal? Eh, not sure I (or any of us) have enough information to even form an opinion yet, but I will get into that here. So basically, this will just be a quick summary of how the weekend was for me, and probably for some of you too. I will try to expand on these topics soon. Until then, here is how the weekend went…
Friday evening
I had a basketball game to play at Mid America on Friday evening. I didn’t play well, and I can claim this as my excuse. I was distracted by the news of the scandal! When I saw the first tweet come out about it from Pat Forde, it was just like a punch in the gut and a feeling of “Oh no, not us!” If it happens somewhere else, you just read about it, form your opinions on the particular school, and move on. When it happens to YOUR school, it hits home, and it hurts.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where if accusations are made, the public tends to assume they are true. Why do we automatically believe a prostitute that pimps out her own daughters? Not sure. I guess they can be pretty reliable. And look, I am not saying that nothing happened and everyone involved from UofL is innocent. I am saying that I don’t know what happened, and you don’t either. So when stuff like this first comes out, why assume?
This is the third sex-related offense to cloud over the UofL basketball program in recent years. How did those other two turn out? Karen Sypher went to prison, and Chris Jones had his charges dropped. But in those instances once again, everyone jumped to conclusions when accusations were made. Just wait. Even if it comes out that UofL did something wrong, I would still wait. The truth will come out. This isn’t something you want to rush judgement on and then be way out of line. Or maybe you do. I don’t.
So that is where I’m at. I don’t know enough to have an educated opinion on this particular situation. I will just say that I don’t rush to believe a woman in this “profession”, and also…I am not sure that athletes would have to pay to get attention from the ladies. Just saying.
Saturday morning radio
Cardinal Sports Zone on 93.9 The Ville was on the air from 9-10:30 on Saturday morning. The plan all week was to talk Louisville football the whole time and just mention that there was a basketball scrimmage that day. Yea, that show format changed on Friday. Steve, Jeremy, and I had what I thought was our biggest and most important show to date. This was a HUGE topic. We couldn’t mess this up.
And I don’t think we did at all. We had the most callers we have ever had on our show. People voiced their opinions, and only one or two people (I think one) disagreed with anything that we said. Other people, for the most part, thanked us for letting them say what they had to say, and said they enjoyed listening to us. Considering the topic at hand, I felt very good about the show.
We talked about basketball and the scandal all the way until about 10:27, when we finally got to talk football for about a minute. Although the scandal news was important, we had Pete Nochta call in and tell us news that is a million times more important than any kind of scandal. Pete just finished his last round of chemo for lymphoma and he shared that with us on the air. It was an amazing way to end the show.
Oh yea, a football game
It is weird to think that such a big game could play as a distraction, but that is exactly what this was. Louisville’s game at NC State was just what we needed to get our minds back to the playing field, and this was a must-win for the Cards. With a loss, there would be no salvaging this weekend. But Lamar Jackson and the Cards went on the road and got the hard-fought victory, and it could definitely turn the season around. Now, Louisville gets a bye week before traveling to Tallahassee to take on Florida State. A two game winning streak and an extra week to prepare for the Seminoles. This season can be turned around VERY quickly!
Back to basketball
After watching the football game downtown with my CSZ mates, we walked over to the KFC Yum! Center to support this basketball team. There was obviously a huge elephant in the arena, but seeing a big dunk by Deng Adel, three pointers by David Levitch, and a Kareem-esque sky-hook from Anas was just a big relief. It made things feel normal for just a little while. Eight fouls in one half for Chinanu Onuaku didn’t feel normal, or maybe it did. He shoots free throws underhanded now so he should have unlimited fouls. Anyway…
I hope to post a separate piece later just about the scrimmage and what I took away from it, so I will save the rest for later.
What next?
I am fine if we don’t have to experience this roller coaster of emotions every single weekend. Once in a while? Fine. But where do we go from here? Well, we let the investigation run its course and we follow along and just see what happens. In the mean time, we support the guys on the basketball team right now, who seem like great kids and could be one of the easiest teams to root for.
On the football side of things, we enjoy the bye week and check in on other ACC games, realizing that by beating NC State, we are right back in the thick of things. A win at Florida State and watch out, things could get very interesting!
It was a crazy weekend. Let’s stick together when it is needed the most.
As always, Go Cards!
