Quick thoughts from Pitino's Duke preview

Louisville coach Rick Pitino spoke for about 20 minutes on Friday, mostly discussing the Cards' 12 p.m. Saturday game against Duke at the KFC Yum! Center.

Obviously this is one of U of L's biggest games of the season, right on par with the UK game in terms of tension and anticipation, and Pitino said he thinks Saturday's game environment will be "even better" than Louisville-Ohio State earlier this season. (Yes, he maintains that the Louisville-UK game is decidedly not a great home atmosphere because there are so many fans of the opposing team.)

Nonetheless, here are a few other thoughts from Pitino's pre-game press conference:

Style vs. style. Pitino isn't about to change Louisville's style of play for one game. Neither is Coach K, Pitino added. So that means we'll see a Louisville team willing to forfeit a few defensive rebounds in exchange for a few turnovers. (Pitino said he can live with giving up offensive rebounds, but in the UNC game, his team wasn't pursuing rebounds hard enough.) For Duke, Coach K and his Blue Devils will keep playing that man-to-man defense with exaggerated help, and they'll be willing to work through some tough performances (see Miami, NC State) if it means they get better for March. It's going to be a very interesting defensive chess match tomorrow.

"We're just going to stick with our normal game plan," Pitino said. "I know they'll do what they're going to do. Two losses won't change them."

Guard play. Louisville's primary guards Chris Jones and Terry Rozier "have had terrific years," Pitino said, but U of L is still hunting for a consistent third guard to help them. Rozier said that backup shooting guard Anton Gill is making progress in practice, and that Quentin Snider's tasked with the tough challenge of playing head-to-head against Jones every day in practice. But, he said, one of those guys will emerge. Someone will have to, Pitino said, because teams don't win in the NCAA tournament without three solid guards.

Checking the UNC emotion. The exact quote after UNC's 72-71 win over Louisville was, "It stings as much as any game I've coached." At the time, Pitino was still hurt from his team blowing a 13-point second-half lead and losing a tight game on the road. It was a high-intensity game with a lot of emotion attached. But his comment drew the usual rolled-eyes response from fans on social media. How could a January regular-season loss match the sting of Louisville's Sweet 16 loss to UK last year or UK's loss to Duke in the famous Christian Laettner game in the early 90s? Pitino, grinning the whole way through his answer, made it pretty clear that he realized in retrospect that his comment was probably off a little bit. "Oh, it's nowhere close" to the Laettner game, he said.