CARDINALS

Pitino: Lack of deflections hurting defense

Jeff Greer

@jeffgreer_cj

Louisville head coach Rick Pitino, center, talks to his players during a time out in the final seconds of an NCAA college basketball game against Syracuse in Syracuse, N.Y., Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015. Syracuse won 69-59. (AP Photo/Nick Lisi)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Forgive Rick Pitino if he sounds like a broken record.

The University of Louisville basketball coach has a message that he wants to drive home to his players, and he doesn't care how often he repeats it, at least until his team's course changes.

Louisville has lost three of its last four games, including a 69-59 decision at Syracuse on Wednesday, and Pitino's Cardinals aren't generating enough turnovers. The source of that problem, among several others? Deflections.

In the moments after Wednesday's game, Pitino passed along a piece of scratch paper to The Courier-Journal. On it, he had scribbled down the number of deflections, per player, in the contest.

Seven players combined for 18 deflections, he wrote, which fell 17 short of Louisville's per-game goal. Montrezl Harrell led the team with five, Chinanu Onuaku had four and Terry Rozier had three. Senior wing Wayne Blackshear was the only player who logged minutes without a single deflection.

"Need 35," Pitino wrote. "(Former U of L players Peyton Siva and Russ Smith) averaged 8-10 per game."

The lack of deflections is not a new issue this season, and neither are Louisville's defensive problems. In other words, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Louisville (20-6, 8-5 in the ACC) only nabbed two steals at Syracuse, or that Syracuse only turned the ball over seven times.

"We need to get back to causing more turnovers and causing more chaos on the defensive end," said Harrell, who recorded U of L's only two steals.

"We're known for defense that causes chaos and having people being sped up and not running their plays. This year, we haven't been too tuned in."

Pitino said during Wednesday's post-game press conference that he'd start posting his players' deflection totals on his website in the coming days. It's not the first time this season he's floated the idea.

Harrell and Rozier talked of planning a players-only team meeting to discuss the deflection and defense problems.

Who knows if any of it will work, but it's clearly something that bothers Pitino and his team's leaders.

Twice on Wednesday, Rozier shook his head as he said that Louisville's struggles in recent weeks aren't from its offense.

"It's our defense," he said.

Pitino has been saying it for weeks, essentially since the beginning of the season, and this particular problem, more than any other, has persisted.

"We're in the right spot, doing the right things and then, all the sudden, you get the ball and go right by me," Pitino said. "It's ball containment of the dribbler that's hurting us … In the past, (issues like free-throw shooting) haven't hurt us because we got so many extra possessions with turnovers."

Not this season. Not on Wednesday with a short bench, or a rotation hamstrung by a suspended point guard in Chris Jones and a foul-prone small forward in Blackshear.

Pitino said that, at Syracuse, Louisville substituted "out of weakness" and that his team can't press the way it used to because of that. He believes in his young players' potential, but he's not fully ready to trust them this season.

And so all those issues build up to a lack of deflections and a lack of turnovers.

"And it's hurt us," Harrell said.

Especially the past two weeks.

Reach U of L beat writer Jeff Greer at (502) 582-4044 and follow him on Twitter (@jeffgreer_cj).