Hlas: Pitino puts Panthers on pedestals

SEATTLE - Rick Pitino could sell vodka to Kentucky bourbon-distillers.

Saturday, the Louisville men's basketball coach predictably sold the merits of Northern Iowa's team. Sold them hard.

At 31-3 and in a Round-of-32 NCAA tournament game against Pitino's Louisville Cardinals tonight at KeyArena (approximately 8:40 p.m., TBS), the Panthers probably don't require much promotion. But Pitino could have filled a brochure for UNI hoops at his press conference here Saturday.

'We played Duke,” Pitino said. 'We played Virginia twice, we played Kentucky, we played Indiana, Ohio State, we have played some outstanding teams. This team is as good as any team we have played this year with maybe the exception of Kentucky.”

That bit of selling came after Pitino said this: 'They can hurt you in so many different ways. They have got great speed in the backcourt. When they substitute they don't lose a single thing. They're very deep. Their power forward (Nate Buss) is a great shooter. Their center (Seth Tuttle) can step out and shoot as well as put it on the ground.

'They trap the post like Virginia, they double the post just like them. They blitz pick-and-rolls just like Virginia.”

Virginia won the regular-season title of the Cardinals' conference, the ACC, and is 30-3. So, effusive praise. Today we'll see how much UNI resembles Virginia, and more importantly, how much it resembles a Sweet 16 team.

But what about the Cardinals, who are seeded fourth in the East Region to UNI's No. 5?

No, Louisville isn't the Louisville that won the 2013 national-championship, went to the Final Four the year before that, and won 96 games over the last three seasons.

Still, the 24-8 Cardinals own wins over Ohio State, North Carolina, and yes, Virginia.

'We're still a pretty good basketball team,” Pitino said. 'We're not deep and we have had a lot of adversity, and we have a lot of young players. But we're still good.

'It wouldn't surprise me if we made a Final Four run. It wouldn't surprise me if we got knocked out early. We're good enough to win, but we're also - we're not an overpowering basketball team like we have been the past three years.”

The Cardinals aren't a good shooting team. But they start four capable scorers. And they play defense. Ninety-four feet of it.

'You've got to … get the basketball in bounds,” UNI Coach Ben Jacobson said about how to deal with Pitino's pressure defense.

'Sometimes they will trap the first pass, and then other times they're going to let you get it in and then trap you somewhere else on the floor.”

'We have got experienced guys, we've got good ballhandlers. We've got guys that can shoot the basketball. So you've got to be able to attack at the back half of it.”

A looming question is if starting off-guard Matt Bohannon will be able to help the Panthers today. He suffered a broken left index finger during UNI's 71-54 win over Wyoming here Friday, and had surgery on it a few hours later.

Bohannon has started every game this season and has a team-high 54 three-pointers. He was involved in the team's shoot-around Saturday, but what he can give the team today is uncertain. If he can't start, Jacobson said, junior Paul Jesperson will.

Jesperson made three 3-pointers and led his team with 16 points against Wyoming. But he sees UNI's defense as the key to success against the Cardinals.

'I think the defensive end and our ability to rebound, that's going to be the two biggest keys to the game,” Jesperson said. 'I think if we can do those things we should put ourselves in a pretty good position.”

By the way, Jesperson transferred to UNI from ... Virginia.

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