This Loss Means a Total Wash-Out

Washington guard Nate Robinson stood by his coach, bent at the waist, trying to stretch out his cramping legs but unable to make the pain in his heart go away.

Louisville, champion of Conference USA, regular season and tournament, owner of 31-4 record and a curiously low No. 4 seeding in the NCAA Albuquerque Regional, ran circles around Robinson’s top-seeded Huskies on Thursday night in the Sweet 16. The Cardinals built a 12-point halftime lead and just kept going, eliminating Washington, 93-79.

Back in the Elite Eight for the first time since 1997, Louisville will play West Virginia, which defeated Texas Tech, 65-60, later Thursday. The winner will go to the Final Four.

The Cardinals won because they never gave the Huskies (29-6) any room.

No room to run, no room to pass, no room to rattle the rim with the dunks and put-backs and joyous fastbreaks that the Huskies thrived on while finishing second in the Pacific 10 Conference and winning the Pac-10 tournament.

Robinson was made to look small. He is only 5 feet 9, but usually he finds ways to hang in the air until his defender drops to earth or to roll toward the basket, a bowling ball of momentum until he leaps and dunks the ball.

But against Louisville he was tiny. He had three fouls in the first 11 minutes and sat on the bench with his nervous legs kicking his chair as he watched his team scatter and shoot aimlessly for the final 8 minutes 51 seconds of the first half.

And it was no coincidence that that was when the game unraveled for Washington. When Robinson sat down, the Huskies were leading, 23-16. By halftime the Cardinals were celebrating a 31-12 run that gave them a 47-35 lead.

That stretch of superiority -- “a period of great offensive synchronicity,” said Washington Coach Lorenzo Romar -- was keyed by the shooting and passing of Francisco Garcia, who finished with a game-high 23 points. The Louisville forward, whose bony elbows and knees always seem to point toward the basket, had three three-point baskets in the stretch. He brought the ball upcourt and he played octopus defense, the fulcrum of the Cardinals’ two-three zone.

By halftime Robinson and Tre Simmons, Washington’s two leading scorers, had played a combined 13 minutes and accumulated six fouls between them.

“Man, I haven’t been on the bench that long since high school,” Robinson said. “It was real hard to watch.”

The junior, who is expected to turn professional, finished with only eight points and three assists. “Not my best,” Robinson said. “Not at all.”

Simmons finished with only 10 points, so two players who averaged nearly 33 a game had 18.

Louisville Coach Rick Pitino said his goal was to run judiciously and, occasionally, to take time off the clock. “We wanted to go slow on made baskets and attack on misses,” he said. “Offensively, we wanted to force them to help out when we drove and then get our shooters open in the corners.”

The plan worked. The Cardinals made 11 three-pointers and shot 55.4% from the field. When Robinson and Simmons had to sit with foul trouble, Washington was forced into playing an uncomfortable zone defense, which Louisville attacked. The Huskies never got closer than eight points in the second half.