Louisville uses defense to capture the Big East

From Inquirer Wire Services
Posted: March 11, 2012

It clearly was going to be a different Big East Tournament final, given that it was the first one without one of the original seven teams. It turned out to be historic in another way, too, as the lowest-scoring championship game the league ever has seen. Still, it managed to uphold Big East tradition by being so hard fought.

Louisville held on to win a defense-first, defense-second, defense-last title game over old neighborhood rival Cincinnati, 50-44, at New York's Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. If this is how the league will look when Syracuse leaves, the Big East can at least look forward to an extended run of bruising competition.

Chris Smith scored 15 points to lead the Cardinals, who won their second Big East title in four years, and Kyle Kuric had 13. The Cardinals won the title in 2009 and lost to Connecticut in last year's championship game.

Louisville (26-9) limited Cincinnati big man Yancy Gates to nine points. Cashmere Wright had 16 points for the Bearcats (24-10), who were in the title game for the first time.

Cincinnati came back within four, and had a chance to cut it further with 28.7 seconds left, but JaQuon Parker missed two free throws for the Bearcats, who were a stunning 1 for 8 from the line. Russ Smith sank two free throws a second later to put Louisville up by six.

The previous mark for a low-wattage championship game was in 2007, Georgetown's 65-42 victory over Pittsburgh.

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