I woke up this morning excited to catch the Cards in a nationally televised contest against UConn. I thought it would be a good chance to test our collective mettle in a hostile environment...and the boys did not disappoint.
Although we looked sloppy early, the Cards hung in there with another solid performance from Derrick Caracter. When David Padgett got into early foul trouble for the second consecutive road game, Caracter came into the game and dominated by scoring 16 first half points. After about 2 or 3 buckets in a row, I got a call from my dad. In the most obvious comment of the week, he said "I don't think we lose anything with Caracter in there instead of Padgett."
Caracter has been consistently outplaying Padgett both offensively and defensively. His combination of quickness and strength is unstoppable. Where Padgett has the size and skill to score over or around defenders, Caracter takes it right at you and beats you to the rim. Plus the 15 foot shot makes him nearly unguardable. The development of two legitamate interior threats is what makes us so dangerous down the stretch.
I'm proud to say that I've hung in there with these guys all season. We weathered the storm and come through even stronger. Our mental toughness showed in the second half. When UConn's new stud, Jerome Dyson, kept bombing threes, our team stood tall and ran our offense. Like Dave Padgett said earlier this week, we just have to run the plays to the end and good things will happen. We did just that, making the extra passes that led to big threes by Clark, TWill, and the dagger by Sosa with 1:30 left.
Way to go Cards, lets hope the Dores can pick it up and knock off the Cats in Nashville to complete the Sunday sweep!
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