Rutgers and Louisville are playing live on Thursday in the American conference tournament quarterfinals and the Cardinals come in as defending nation champions and they are looking to repeat and the AAC game starts up at 3 pm ET and streaming on ESPNU and WatchESPN online.
Louisville comes into the game ranked fifth in the nation and is 26-5 on the season and they face a Scarlet Knights team that went just 5-13 in the conference this season. The team comes in after a huge win against UConn by like 40 points and now they have the chance to keep things rolling as they play in the quarterfinals after having a bye in the tournament and this comes after the Cardinals made a run to the finals and won the championship last season with Russ Smith leading the way and now Rick Pitino has his team playing very well down the stretch and that could lead to the first repeat in years.
Louisville has been strong all season and they are now coming in after winning nine of their last 10 games and the only loss was to a ranked team in Memphis and they had nice wins over Cincy as well as UConn and SMU when they were ranked and they also lost earlier in the season to the Tigers and they fell earlier to North Carolina and that could be a matchup later in the postseason in the NCAA tournament.
The team comes in scoring over 80 points per game and they rank 12th in the nation, while they are 25th in assists per game and 29th in field goal percentage and they are shooting nearly 48 percent from the field. The team is led by Smith who is tops with 17 points per game and nearly five assists and the team has gotten some nice play from Montrez Harrell and Chane Behanan as well and they will be the leaders for the team heading into the tournament. Smith has been shooting nearly 47 percent and he will be key on Thursday against Rutgers.
Cincy finished on top of the conference standings over Louisville due to that win and they finished ahead of UConn, Memphis and Southern Methodist and the AAC quietly is deep, as all of those teams are ranked in the top 25 entering the tournament. Rutgers comes in after a win against South Florida in the first round and they suffered a tough loss against the Cardinals earlier in the season and they will try to avenge that and they come into after losing two of their final three games, including to the Bearcats and Huskies and before that they won against the Bulls and they had a tough stretch earlier, losing to ranked teams in Louisville, Memphis and SMU in a row.
