updated 2:35 p.m. ET March 25, 2005

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Rick Pitino pushed all the right buttons, while Francisco Garcia and Taquan Dean made all the tough shots.

The result for Louisville was a 93-79 victory over top-seeded Washington — a win that put the Cardinals in the Albuquerque Regional final and turned their insulting fourth seed into little more than an afterthought.

“Um, that’s not something we think about,” forward Larry O’Bannon said. “Coach tells us, ‘You’ve got to go out there and play the game,’ so we just go out there and play.”

Taking advantage of Pitino’s instruction to penetrate, then kick the ball out, Garcia and Dean hit five 3-pointers apiece. The Cardinals (32-4) finished with 11 total, and improved to 24-1 this season when they make at least seven from long range.

Slide show   March 27 See images from the wins by Michigan State and North Carolina on Day 8 of the NCAA Tournament.

“You wonder what it would’ve been like if they hadn’t been making all the 3s,” Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar said. “But they’ve won 31 other times this year. I’m sure there are 31 other teams who have said that.”

This was billed as a matchup between Washington (29-5), the team trying to prove it really did deserve a top seed, and Louisville, the team that had lost only once since Jan. 8 and couldn’t believe it was only a No. 4.

The Cardinals moved on to Saturday’s regional final against West Virginia, which beat Bobby Knight and Texas Tech 65-60.

Meanwhile, Washington’s top two scorers, Nate Robinson and Tre Simmons, struggled to defend against Pitino’s inside-outside offense and wound up languishing on the bench with three fouls for a big chunk of the first half.

Robinson picked up his third at the 8:51 mark and Simmons picked up his third with 3:50 left, which is exactly when Garcia started the run that put Louisville ahead 45-32.

“It was weird,” Washington guard Brandon Roy said. “I was playing, kind of going through the motions, I looked at coach and said, ‘Why isn’t Nate in there?’ He said Nate had three fouls. It was kind of disappointing.”

The teams traded buckets through much of the second half, and things got chippy when O’Bannon (18 points) went down in a heap with Jamaal Williams and Bobby Jones of Washington. O’Bannon appeared to tap Williams with his foot while Williams was down and the Huskies got angry.

Robinson responded with a steal and dunk — his only field goal of the night — and Hakeen Rollins made back-to-back baskets to pull Washington within 67-61.

But less than two minutes later, Garcia hit his fifth 3-pointer to make it 76-65 and the Cardinals never let the lead fall below double digits.

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