NEW YORK – The first Big East semifinal was a thriller. The second one wasn’t, but its result leads to the possibility of one in the final championship game in the Big East Tournament as we know it. What’s not a possibility, but rather, a given, is that the second one sets up a final that is only fitting for a very different reason.
With Syracuse already in the final by virtue of a 58-55 overtime win over Georgetown, Louisville then punched their ticket with a victory over Notre Dame. The Cardinals gradually pulled away from the Fighting Irish, who were able to hang around most of the night and even tied the game in the first half, for a 69-57 victory.
That sets up a final with two schools heading off to the ACC, although Louisville will go a year later than Syracuse. It’s between a charter member and a relative newcomer, as Louisville entered in 2005 but is now heading to its third straight title game and has won six straight Big East Tournament games. The bigger layers, however, are the regular season meetings between the two, as well as the coaching matchup of Jim Boeheim against his former assistant coach, Rick Pitino.
Louisville and Syracuse played two great games in the regular season. The road team won both games, so there’s one more reason to throw out any season stats for the teams or how their games went during the season. You can look at how Louisville gave away the first meeting for a partial angle, but that’s not all, nor is the fact that Syracuse has played one more game this week. There is the relative direction each team was going before this week – Louisville came in having won seven straight since losing the memorable five-overtime game at Notre Dame, while Syracuse had lost four out of five – but each team has won their way to this game.
In other words, you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how this will go based on the recent past. The best thing to do is what we could do with Georgetown-Syracuse on Friday night: appreciate it for what it is. We should appreciate the matchup itself and the fact that there are so many angles to it. It all adds up to a highly-anticipated game.
Pitino was asked about the matchup and, as is his wont after a win, was in storytelling mode. He said he was happy for Boeheim because his team was not playing well coming into the tournament. Amid rumors of his own possible retirement, Boeheim has apparently been saying of late that Pitino needs to retire, and told Pitino’s wife in a restaurant, “His children are all grown up. Mine are young. I have to coach 10 or 12 more years.”
He also told a story of when Syracuse won the Carrier Classic over Michigan State and went off on a writer. The Syracuse beat writer voted for Magic Johnson as the MVP over the Orange’s Marty Burns, and Jim couldn’t believe it. Pitino even crumpled up a stat sheet to demonstrate how Boeheim did just that and threw it at the writer.
“I love Jim,” said Pitino. “He’s loyal to his guys at Syracuse. We’re happy for him that he’s in the finals, and we’re excited to be in the finals.”
In a week with a lot of nostalgia, Friday night was one that will be remembered for a lot of reasons. There’s every reason to expect that Saturday night, with two teams that played great regular season games against one another and with the coaching matchup, will follow suit. Given how this week has been, it’s the only way this can end.
