Iona, Ruland and 1980. Deja vu?

Cardinal history and lore provides an example of what could happen now.

The 1980 championship team had raced to 18 straight wins and a #2 ranking, when they strutted in to Madison Square Garden on February 21, 1980 to play Iona–and Jeff Ruland– to end their regular season.

Images of the 6′ 10″ bull-like Ruland still haunt Card memories. NBA bound, Ruland went off for 21 rebounds and 30 pts.

And the Cards were man-handled 77-60.

But…. see what Griff and the guys took from that game, and transformed it into?

Will this team?

Let’s look closely at the box score tea leaves:

We beat them by 2 pts in the second half. We beat the spread.

We barely lost to a pumped G-Town team on their home floor, even when they out-shot and out-rebounded us badly . The only way we stayed in that game was turning them over–and we did.

IF we hit just 33% from 3 land, we have had 6 more pts. IF we hit just 67% of free throws–that’s two more pts. And, we win by 5.

Tough game, great learning experience. As the BET will be, too.

IF no one gets injured, after all that, then I truly believe this team will be poised for a deep, deep run.

Pitino has been brilliant this season in how he scheduled to progressively test and bring this team along. Rigorous schedule, several tournaments, all leading to the big stage .

Looking ahead, gocardsgo32 on ITV crunched some numbers into some very interesting points on how important NCAA tourney seeding has proven to be for # 1 thru 4 seeds:

“So overall this is how you beak down the teams by seed the past four years that made the Sweet 16:

1 seed: 14 of 16 teams 87.5%

2 seed: 9 of 16 teams 56%

3 seed: 9 of 16 teams 56%

4 seed: 6 of 16 teams 37.5%

As you can see – huge difference between the 1 and 2 seeds, and between the 3 and 4 seeds.”

Mike at Card Chronicle points out that if you go back to1986 though, then there is a big difference between a #2 and #3 seed:

Sweet 16: 43-15 vs. 21-23.

I am hoping for at least a strong run to the title game. If we grab the title, a #2 is possible. The only thing I fear is that a bad first or second game flame-out in the BET could lead to a 4 seed–and that is indisputably tough sledding.

On to the Garden…