Garcia blames himself
for ice-cold performance
Shadowed by Williams, Head,
Louisville's top scorer only 2 for 10
 Eric Gay / AP Louisville's Francisco Garcia tries to shoot over Dee Brown of Illinois on Saturday. Garcia, Louisville's top scorer, was 2 for 10 and missed all four of his 3-point attempts as Louisville lost 72-57. |
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ST. LOUIS - Francisco Garcia blamed no one but himself for his worst performance of the NCAA tournament.
“I got some easy shots. I just couldn’t make them,” said Louisville’s junior star, who went 2-for-10 in the Cardinals’ 72-57 loss to Illinois in the Final Four.
The 6-foot-7 swingman averaged 21 points in Louisville’s first four tournament games. He sank shot after shot in pregame warm-ups, bolstering his confidence.
“I really felt like it was going to be a good night,” he said.
But the 3-pointer he missed from the wing 50 seconds in was an indication of what was to come.
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Shadowed by Illinois’ Deron Williams and Luther Head, Garcia never found his range, missing all four of his 3-point attempts. His two baskets came on a backdoor cut in the first half and an uncontested lay-up following a steal early in the second half.
“Deron did a great job, along with Luther, of not letting Garcia get going,” Illinois coach Bruce Weber said.
Taquan Dean, Garcia’s roommate, said Illinois’ defense had little to do with his best friend’s struggles.
“They were just crowding him a little bit,” Dean said. “He didn’t play as well as he should’ve.”
Louisville coach Rick Pitino has said all season that Garcia has the tendency to try to do too much.
That’s what happened Saturday.
“Francisco didn’t let the game come to him,” Pitino said. “He got caught taking some tough shots, and he was concerned about being off. He was concerned that he wasn’t contributing enough. That was the only problem with it.”
Throughout the game, Pitino urged Garcia to keep shooting.
“He said, ’Relax. The openings are going to come,”’ Garcia recalled.
They did, but the shots never fell.
“I had good looks. For some reason, they were off tonight,” Garcia said.
None of Garcia’s teammates fared much better.
Taquan Dean, who sank a school-record 108 3-pointers during the regular season, went 4-for-15 and 2-for-9 from 3-point range. Dean said he struggled to adjust to the spacious shooting background at the Edward Jones Dome — far different from the intimate practice facility back in Louisville.
“They looked good. If those had been in the other gym, they would’ve gone in,” Dean said.
The Cardinals finished 21 of 54 from the field (38.9 percent) after topping 50 percent in their previous three games. They went 6 of 20 from 3-point range.
Larry O’Bannon, who shot 59 percent in Louisville’s last nine games, epitomized the Cardinals’ struggles by missing a lay-up with 2:39 left.
O’Bannon shrugged off the notion that defense shut down the Cardinals.
“We didn’t see anything that our coaches hadn’t prepared us for,” said O’Bannon, who went 4-for-10 from the field and scored 12 points. “They jumped out on a lot of screens, were hedging a lot. But it was nothing we hadn’t seen.”
Early on, the Cardinals compensated for their bad shooting with the 2-3 half-court zone defense they used most of the season to protect a thin bench.
The Illini looked like they might be ready to shred it after Williams and Head sank 3-pointers 80 seconds in. But Illinois missed 10 of its next 11 3-point attempts.
Louisville fought to a 22-22 tie, but the Illini surged back ahead as the Cardinals went cold again, going 6 minutes without a field goal.
Dean’s last 3-pointer pulled Louisville to 50-49 with 10:24 left. The Illini then went on an 11-0 run as the Cardinals missed four straight shots.
The Illini stayed comfortably ahead as the desperate Cardinals started missing point-blank attempts.
The loss ended a remarkable run for Pitino, who became the first coach to get three different schools to the Final Four.
Louisville was playing in its eighth Final Four but the first since the Cardinals won the title in 1986 — the school not even advanced to the regionals since 1997.
“It’s not a game of statistics right now, because we lost,” Pitino said. “We fought as hard as we could.”
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