If not for Luke Hancock, the best weekend that Louisville coach Rick Pitino has ever had – heck anyone has ever had – might have been ruined.
Just this week, Pitino’s son Richard was named coach at Minnesota. Goldencents, a horse Pitino has a stake in, qualified for the Kentucky Derby and it was announced that will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
And on Monday, Cool Hand Luke scored 22 points to lead Pitino’s Cardinals to an 82-76 victory over Michigan in the national championship game in the Georgia Dome, helping Pitino to his second national championship.
“It doesn’t get better than this, it’s unbelievable,” Hancock said.
Hancock’s 22 points were the second-most points for a non-starter in NCAA title game history. Combined with the 20 points he scored against Wichita State in Saturday’s semifinal, Hancock was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player. He is to be the first non-starter to win the award, researched back to 1939.
Hancock was in a zone perhaps only known by Pitino during his remarkable stretch this week. Hancock hit 11 of his 15 shot attempts, including eight of his 10 3-pointers.
Hancock scored 14 consecutive points for the Cardinals to bring them back from a 12-point deficit in the first half. His run started with two free throws with 3:33 left. He continued with a 3-pointer with 2:59 left and added another 24 seconds later.
Still not done, he buried another 1:50 left to cut the Wolverines’ lead to four.
Still not done, he hit one more to cut Louisville’s deficit to one with 1 minute left.
“I just thought we needed something,” Hancock, a junior, said. “I tried to do whatever I could to help the team. I usually take a back seat to Russ (Smith) and Peyton (Siva), which I’m fine with since they are such great players. I just hit a few shots.”
Yeah, a few shots.
And the Georgia Dome had a few fans (it actually set the NCAA championship record with 74,326 attendees).
Hancock then became the distributor, connecting with Smith and then Siva for three assists in the second half. His last came on an alley-oop slam to Siva that gave the Cardinals a five-point lead with 6:25 left.
He capped his performance with a 3-pointer that gave the Cardinals a 76-66 lead with 3:27 left, shutting the door on Michigan’s comeback.
It’s been an interesting ride for Hancock, one he recapped while sitting on the podium Monday night while hugging the NCAA tournament trophy and saying one of the plusses of winning is that he’ll finally get to shave off his beard, which he scratched at during the beginning of the interviews.
He was lightly recruited out of Roanoke, Va. He enrolled at Hargrave Military Academy, where he played for current Louisville Kevin Keatts, and eventually signed with George Mason when Jim Larranaga was coach. Hancock played well, averaging 7.7 points as a freshman and 10.9 points per game as a sophomore to help the Patriots reach the second round of the NCAA tournament. But when Larranaga left for Miami, Hancock decided to transfer.
He started the season unevenly, failing to score more than eight points in the season’s first four games before erupting for 19 against Missouri. He then failed to score in the next two games. That inconsistent pattern played out all year. Scoring spurts, such as 22 points at Notre Dame, would be followed by five and five in the next two games.
But Hancock started to find his role and his form in the Big East tournament, scoring at least 10 points in all three wins.
He wasn’t needed as much in the Cardinals’ first three NCAA tournament games.
But he scored 10 in the 85-63 win over Duke in the quarterfinals, followed by his performances against the Shockers and Wolverines.
“Fortunately for us, when we started this tournament, and Luke started playing a lot more minutes, we became a great halfcourt offensive basketball team,” Pitino said. “And tonight was as good as it gets.”
Hancock’s inspiration came from his family. He hasn’t talked about it much, but Yahoo.com detailed on Sunday that Luke’s father, Bill, has been dealing with a medical issue that has prevented him from attending many of his son’s games. He went to the Big East tournament in New York, but only attended one game. He was able to attend Saturday’s win over Wichita State and was there on Monday.
“There’s really no way to describe how I feel that my dad was here,” Hancock said. “It’s hard to put into words. I’m so excited that he was here, it just means a lot.”
