Rick Pitino, center, celebrates with his players by and by locomote to the Final four.(Photo: Brian Spurlock, USA TODAY Sports)
INDIANAPOLIS — Rick Pitino once lost a botch son to congenital heart failure. They had to pull him off the parsimoniousness team up bus to tell him. So Sunday was not the hardest day he has ever spent as a check.
And yet, this was a nightm be he would never want to relive. He was nearly nauseous when he saw what had happened to Kevin run through. And it was so hard, when he had to bend over a player in wo(e) with a compound fractured leg, and try to tell him the world would be OK. Those minutes will stay with him forever, just as foresightful as the glow from any Final Four.
"I looked at his leg, and he looked at his leg and he screamed," Pitino said later. "And I told him, 'You're going to be fine, you're going to be fine.' He unplowed chanting, 'Just win the game. Just win the game.'
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Twelve times, Ware said that, by Pitino's count.
"And we did, for him."
In the end, postcode could stop the Louisville Cardinals Sunday. Not Duke. Not the pressure of the moment. Not the sight of one of their own, sprawled on the court with an injury too drear for anyone to befuddle to bear, or see. "Nothing,'' Pitino called it, "like I've ever witnessed before in my life from a basketball game."
Can anyone stop them now? unstated to imagine, after what Sunday took.
Imagine this. As the Cardinals celebrated in the console room, their teammate was in surgery. Ware was in the hands of doctors, called in this Easter Sunday to try to repair a tatterdemalion leg, the likes of which the NCAA tournament has likely never seen.
"I wouldn't expect secret code to handle that the way Kevin handled it," Russ Smith said by his locker. "He kept saying 'Just win, just win.' His leg (bone) was out, and that's all he kept saying. That's a man."
Louisville Cardinalsforward Luke Hancock (top) gives encouragement to guard Kevin Ware (bottom) after Ware suffered an injury and is taken off the court on a stretcher in the premier(prenominal) one-half during the finals of the Midwest regional of the 2013 NCAA tournament against the Duke Blue Devils at Lucas oil color Stadium.(Photo: Brian Spurlock, USA TODAY Sports)
The Cardinals are going to the Final Four after blowing past Duke 85-63, march on with a purpose — and in pain. It hurt anyone who was tone when the clock struck 6:33 in the first half Sunday.
First came the injury. Too horrible to watch on action replay ever, ever again. Ware's lower right leg seeming to embellish when he came down on it near the sideline, after natural spring to challenge Tyler Thornton's 3-pointer.
Then came the shock.
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Chane Behanan lay on the ground, weeping. "I was just ... lost," he would say later. Gorgui Dieng leaned over, his hands on his knees. Smith gazed off into space. "I didn't think ever in a million geezerhood I would see something like that," he said afterward.
Lucas petroleum Stadium, thunderous moments before, had gone so silent, it seemed as if someone had shine the mute button.
What a game it had been the first 13½ minutes. delirious and raw and nothing held back. And then everything stopped. There had been no bloody(a) collision. Just a hard landing of foot against floor, by a player at full competitive fire, as they all were in a first half where not one stake was played softly. Not one.
And then ... snap. An NFL, Joe Theismann-type snap. A dreadful, heart-stopping sight that had just dropped into the middle of a cracking good basketball game. And who should tweet out his sympathy moments later, understanding the anguish of what had just happened? Joe Theismann.
They gathered around Ware, the trainers and doctors and anyone who could help. The minutes went by. The Final Four would have to wait. Everything would have to wait. A stretcher finally came out, and in brief Ware was gently loaded and wheeled away. The audience applauded, including Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Then the officials brought out the basketball. How could the Cardinals refocus, having witnessed such a sight? Having seen what weed happen so suddenly on a basketball court, which is where they had come to play a game for fun — and on Sunday, for something to cherish?
But the game was waiting. As Pitino said, "We had to gather ourselves. We just couldn't draw back this game for him. We just couldn't."
The Cardinals led 21-20. They seemed to be distracted for entirely a moment or two, but then mayhap the stakes of the day clicked in. They led 35-32 at halftime, and in the second half relentlessly put Duke away.
In the end, there was no doubt. No doubt about their toughness or their will or their ability to overcome adversity. No doubt who the best team was in this arena, and very probably this tournament.
They will be the alone(predicate) No. 1 seed heading to Atlanta, where Kevin Ware went to high school. "We're getting him home," Pitino said. Who imagines the Louisville Cardinals for the sympathy vote?
"I don't think we could have gone in that locker room with a loss," Pitino said, "after seeing that."
"I think that would have hurt him more than than the actual injury," Peyton Siva said
Afterward, Behanan held up a No. 5 uniform on the award platform, and Pitino called for a chant from the crowd. "Ke-vin, Ke-vin."
Meanwhile, Kevin Ware was in a hospital, with an injury to forever mar their, and our, memories of this March.
Materials taken from USA Today
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