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    Unbreakable: Louisville's Inspired 2013 Championship Run
    Unbreakable: Louisville's Inspired 2013 Championship Run
    Unbreakable: Louisville's Inspired 2013 Championship Run
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    Unbreakable: Louisville's Inspired 2013 Championship Run

    By The Louisville Cardinal and Billy Reed

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    About this ebook

    Louisville's win over Michigan in the 2013 NCAA championship game was the culmination of a basketball season few Cardinal fans will ever forget, and this commemorative book takes fans through the team's amazing journey, from their "Battle of the Bluegrass" win over Kentucky to the final seconds in Atlanta. Led by a backcourt featuring "Russdiculous" Russ Smith and star point guard Peyton Siva, Coach Rick Pitino's squad dominated the Big East, winning both the regular season and Big East Tournament championships and earned the top seed in the NCAA tournament. Louisville then stormed past North Carolina A&T, Colorado State, Oregon, and Duke to reach the Final Four for the second consecutive season. Guard Kevin Ware's gruesome leg injury against Duke inspired the team's triumphant performance in the Final Four, when a comeback win over Wichita State set up the title game matchup against the Wolverines. Adding to the school's memorable season, the Louisville women's basketball team upset top-seeded Baylor and also reached the NCAA championship game. Unbreakable: Louisville's Inspired 2013 Championship Run is packed with unique analysis from the U of L's independent student newspaper, stunning action photography, and in-depth profiles of Pitino, Smith, Siva, Ware, Luke Hancock, and Gorgui Dieng. Also included is a special section on Coach Jeff Walz's team and the Cardinals' road to the Women's Final Four in New Orleans.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateApr 1, 2013
    ISBN9781623684396
    Unbreakable: Louisville's Inspired 2013 Championship Run

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      Book preview

      Unbreakable - The Louisville Cardinal

      9781623684396.jpgLouisville_header.jpg-AJL_3786.tif

      Contents

      Introduction by Billy Reed

      NCAA Championship Game vs. Michigan

      Luke Hancock Brings the Threes

      NCAA Tournament Semifinal vs. Wichita State

      Louisville Women’s Squad Joins Men in Final Four

      Peyton Siva

      Star Point Guard Sets the Bar for Student Athletes

      Louisville vs. Kentucky

      Gorgui Dieng

      Louisville vs. Pittsburgh

      Luke Hancock

      Louisville vs. Marquette

      Russ Smith

      Louisville at Notre Dame

      Rick Pitino

      Louisville vs. St. John’s

      Kevin Ware

      Big East Tournament Quarterfinals vs. Villanova

      Big East Tournament Semifinals vs. Notre Dame

      Big East Tournament Title Game vs. Syracuse

      NCAA Tournament Second Round vs. North Carolina A&T

      NCAA Tournament Third Round vs. Colorado State

      NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 vs. Oregon

      NCAA Tournament Elite Eight vs. Duke

      -AJL_6308.tif

      Introduction by Billy Reed

      ‘America’s Team’ Finds the Will to Win Louisville’s Third National Championship

      Pitino Melds a Mosaic of Talents, Skills and Backgrounds En Route to an 82-76 Win over Michigan

      This is the enduring image of the 2013 NCAA men’s basketball tournament: Louisville’s Luke Hancock cradling the head of Kevin Ware in his arms and saying a prayer in the immediate aftermath of the most horrific injury in tournament history. It happened when Ware, flinging himself skyward while attempting to block a Duke player’s shot, came down wrong on his right leg, causing the femur to snap and puncture Ware’s skin. As soon as they saw it, Ware’s teammates either recoiled in horror or fell to the floor, wailing and weeping.

      Except, that is, for Hancock. As the arena went silent and even the CBS announcers were almost too shocked to talk, Hancock prayed in Ware’s ear. A student manager draped a towel over the shattered leg to block it from view. Hearing Hancock, Ware reached deep into his soul and found a kind of grace that defies explanation. Even as he was going into shock, he urged his teammates to not worry about him, to carry on, to win the Midwest Regional championship and the ticket to hoops heaven—the Final Four in Atlanta. And so they did. They wiped away their tears, pulled tightly together and blew out the mighty Blue Devils in the second half.

      It went largely unnoticed that Ware is black and Hancock white. But for basketball fans old enough to have a sense of basketball’s history and sociology, the Hancock-Ware tableau was symbolic. Throughout the history of the NCAA tournament, which celebrated its 75th anniversary this year, only a few champions have carried the name of a city instead of a state or, in the case of Georgetown University, a neighborhood. Forget UCLA and UNLV, which were the local branches of larger state university systems. The city schools that have won titles are City College of New York, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Loyola of Chicago, Syracuse, and, of course, Louisville.

      In their home states, urban universities often get short shrift from the legislature and are considered to be second-class citizens by the public. In the late 1980s, for example, former Kentucky coach Eddie Sutton, ignoring the championship Cardinal teams coached by Peck Hickman and Denny Crum, dismissed U of L as little brother. But what Sutton either didn’t know—or chose to ignore—was that U of L and the other urban universities have made contributions to sports and society that were far more important than anything that happened on the floor.

      -AJL_3894.tif

      Rick Pitino, the only head coach to win national championships with two different NCAA teams, holds the trophy aloft. (Austin Lassell/The Louisville Cardinal)

      Every time significant strides have been made in integration, urban universities have been in the forefront. San Francisco became the first integrated champion in 1955, Cincinnati the first to start three African-American players in 1962, and Loyola the first to start four blacks in 1963. When Hickman and assistant John Dromo recruited U of L’s first African-American players in 1962, it made U of L the first predominantly white university in the state—the first south of the Mason-Dixon Line, according to some accounts—to integrate its program. This is a proud heritage of which Kevin Ware and Luke Hancock probably were unaware when they transferred from Tennessee and George Mason, respectively, to play for Rick Pitino, the native New Yorker who had won the 1996 national title at Kentucky and who also was the first coach to take three programs (Providence, UK and U of L) to the Final Four.

      When they arrived at U of L, they found Pitino building a team not from one-and-done future NBA stars, but from players who had different backgrounds and skill levels. Sure, some had pro bodies and pro ambitions, such as forwards Wayne Blackshear and Chane Behanan. But there also was Stephen Van Treece, a 6-foot-9 player with marginal D-I skills. The team’s core consisted of Gorgui Dieng, a stoic 6-foot-11 center from Africa who could speak five languages; Peyton Siva, a slight point guard from Seattle who was so nice it was impossible to hold his trespasses—turnovers, if you will—against him; and a free spirit from Brooklyn whom Pitino called Russdiculous because of his penchant to put up shots that defied logic, not to mention the laws of gravity.

      From the time Russ Smith arrived on campus, the mental tug-of-war between player and coach provided plenty of fascinating fodder for the

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