Rick Pitino might owe his team a promise and that might involve getting a tattoo. The Louisville Cardinals said Pitino owed them one and that "one" was a tattoo as Pitino explained in the postgame with CBS after his team was crowned the National Champions of Men's NCAA Basketball.
Pitino, who has been coaching Louisville since the 2001-2002 season, has created a special bond with this school and apparently, with this 2013 group, he will emblazon the memory of their run on his skin forever.
In the postgame interview, Pitino referred to the tattoo idea as a promise made to his team 12 or 13 games ago. So let's go to the schedule and track who the Cardinals played at that point in time. Louisville was coming off a tough 105-101 loss to Notre Dame in a 5-Overtime game. That was exactly 16 games before this championship game. That was the changing point for the Louisville season. They went on to win their next 15 consecutive games.
Their streak was challenged by the Syracuse Orange at the beginning of March as Louisville escaped with a 58-53 victory. Then once again in the Big East tournament championship, Syracuse built a double-digit lead into the half. Louisville used their press to create chaos and eventually walk away with the trophy.
In this victory, as well as the Final Four victory over the Wichita St. Shockers, Louisville found itself down by 12 points. In this one, the Cardinals used the help of an unlikely hero, Luke Hancock who combined shooting 13-18 in the two games the Cardinals were without their main bench player, Kevin Ware.
The Cardinals played like a team, got Kevin Ware some hardware and were crowned National Champions of the 2013 season. With the victory, Coach Pitino also becomes the first coach in NCAA Basketball history to win titles with two different teams.
Peyton Siva scored 18 points as he was able to cut apart the Wolverines' interior defense, getting easy buckets. Had made his mind up to finish at the hook taking high percentage shots.
Hancock dropped 22 points going 4-5 from the floor and 5-8 from three. Gorgui Dieng finished the game with eight points, seven rebounds and six assists. Chane Behanan was a beast under the rim scoring a double-double grabbing 13 rebounds and scoring 15 points.