Against the Odds: Louisville big favorites over Pitt

Pitt travels to Louisville to take on Rick Pitino’s Cardinals tonight. The game starts at 7PM at the KFC Yum! Center. Louisville is 13-3 and 1-2 in the ACC. All three of their losses are to ranked teams in Baylor, Virginia, and Notre Dame. They are battle tested and have taken down the likes of Kentucky, Indiana, and Purdue this season. Louisville comes into the contest ranked 13th and 14th respectively in the polls. Vegas certainly is taking this into consideration and has made the Cardinals a 12 point favorite over Pitt.

Pitt enters tonight at 12-4 and 1-2 in the conference. After the close loss to Notre Dame and the upset of UVA, Pitt seemed to be on the upswing. Syracuse brought them back down to earth hard and that probably led to the big point spread this evening. Pitt must play more like they did after the 30-2 run the Orange laid on them in the first half, this past weekend, if they want to have a prayer.

Louisville’s Pitino brings in his usual pressure defense squad and that could pose some huge problems with the Panthers. Their lack of ball handling guards makes this a less than ideal matchup. Pitt has to find ways to break U of L’s press and crash the boards with aggression. Louisville is 11th in the country in rebounding, so Sheldon Jeter will be of great importance on the glass.

As with most of the ACC schedule, this is another tough game for Pitt. There is a flip side to that though. If they can overcome the Vegas oddsmakers and pull off another upset, it’s easy to gain recognition around the country.

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