If you didn't catch it after yesterday's loss to Notre Dame, Trey Lewis vocalized some concerns to the media about playing time and feeling at times like he was playing on "a leash" and "in shackles."
"That's tough, when you're constantly looking over your shoulder wondering if you're getting taken out," Lewis said. "That's tough as a player. Other than that, you just have to find a way to mentally get over those things."
If you were wondering if the comments got back to Bloggin' Rick Pitino, they did.
his is a big week for us to improve and take on two great opponents. We need to somehow
find more minutes for Deng. Speaking of minutes, the frustrations aired to the media by Trey is the wrong forum. I went with Quentin and Donovan in stretches because Donovan has been playing the best in practice and games. Q gets the ball moving. All competitors want more minutes. I'm sure Deng wants to play, Donovan wants more than 18 minutes and Anas more than 11. These guys live by Louisville First. All competitors want to be out there to help their team win, but 25 minutes is nothing to complain about. Trey is a good person who made a Cardinal mistake. It won't be his last. On to Syracuse.
Pitino added some additional comments about next season's schedule.
Next year's schedule will be awesome. Non-conference games include the ACC-Big Ten Challenge game at home, playing Indiana at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis with the arena split in half for the two teams, the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas and Kentucky at home. The conference double games are different in the ACC than the Big East. The Big East would split into thirds, playing one team twice in the top third, then the middle and the bottom. The ACC is all computerized for a 12-year duration. Here are our double games: Virginia with 64% of their players returning, Pitt 62%, ND 82% and Syracuse 56%. All four of those teams and the Ville will be ranked in the top half of the conference. It should be a hell of a schedule.
Last but not least, we are #1 in Pomeroy ranked defense with an extremely young team that does not understand our rotations. This is a good building block.
