DULUTH, Ga. (WDRB) — Most basketball teams have an alpha.
The player who gets the ball when the gym goes quiet. The player who gets the play drawn in the huddle. The player who walks into the locker room already knowing where the last shot is going.
Louisville doesn't have one.
Jeff Walz says that like a man describing the weather. Not apologizing for it. Just observing.
Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford
"We don't have what I would call an alpha," he said after Louisville opened the ACC Tournament by running Syracuse out of Gas South Arena, 87–61.
Instead, Louisville has a sort of rotating monarchy.
One night the crown belongs to Laura Ziegler. Another night it's Imari Berry. Sometimes it's Mackenly Randolph cleaning the glass like a woman rearranging furniture.
Friday afternoon it was Tajianna Roberts.
Roberts scored 17 points and played the role of Louisville's leading voice as the Cardinals once again jumped on Syracuse early, pushed the pace and eventually buried the Orange under the kind of balanced offense that has become their personality.
The Cardinals waited as a team in the Gas South Arena tunnel for Roberts to finish her ESPN interview. And when she came off the court, they screamed and chanted her name before slapping the Cardinal logo onto the tournament poster and into the semifinal round, to be played Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
But Roberts, truthfully, didn't so much take over the game as borrow it.
Because on this Louisville team, the title of alpha comes with a one-night lease.
Six Cardinals finished in double figures Friday. Mackenly Randolph notched another double-double, with 12 points and 10 rebounds. The bench produced 40 points. Louisville shot 55% and assisted on basket after basket as the ball whipped around the offense like it had somewhere better to be, a total of 23 assists.
"The ball was moving and not sticking," Walz said.
That's when Louisville looks most like a dangerous team.
This game started much like Louisville's last game with Syracuse did, with the Cardinals shooting out the lights. They led 25-12 after one quarter. But unlike the last game, Louisville didn't let Syracuse come back. The Orange tried to threaten, but never got their deficit inside of 10 points. Playing without starting point guard Dominique Darius, injured in the Orange's win over Cal, didn't help Syracuse.
Jeff Walz talks to his players during a timeout in the second half of their ACC Tournament win over Syracuse.
But Louisville showed a renewed intensity entering the postseason, got 40 points off the bench, and outscored Syracuse 46-30 in the paint.
There are programs built around a single star. They rise and fall with that player's shooting night, the way a theater rises and falls with the lead actor. Louisville has been there. Plenty of times in the past 20 years, they've had an All-American.
This Louisville is more of an ensemble cast.
Someone different steps into the spotlight every night, and the rest of the production keeps moving.
Against Syracuse, Roberts opened the show.
By the time it ended, Louisville had turned the game into the same thing it has been turning opponents into all season.
A problem with too many answers.
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