How drastically circumstances have changed for Louisville.
The Cardinals, who carried just seven scholarship players for their trip to Virginia on Monday, have gone from rags to riches with Rick Pitino announcing that starting point guard Quentin Snider, who missed six games with a strained hip flexor, was cleared to practice and is expected to return to the lineup on Saturday against Miami.
Also returning on Saturday, according to the Courier-Journal, are Deng Adel and Mangok Mathiang, two key front court pieces who were suspended for the Virginia game for missing curfew.
Here are three things to know about the Cardinals' sudden roster boost.
1. This was a longer recovery than expected for Snider: Originally expected to miss just 2-3 weeks with a hip flexor injury, Snider has missed nearly a month. With Louisville going 4-2 during that span, Pitino was able to wait for Snider to fully recover, which was an emphasis for the coaching and training staff.
"We were very cautious with him," Pitino said via the Courier-Journal.
After weathering the storm in his absence, Louisville now has its starting point guard back at full health for the remainder of ACC play and into the postseason. He'll be coming off a month's rest, but he may also be rusty. Regardless of his performance on the floor, that kind of big-picture thinking will pay off for the team, especially if the Cards make a run in the NCAA Tournament.
2. This is a huge boost for an offensively challenged Louisville team: Louisville won four of its six games in Snider's absence. So the dropoff in his absence has not been much of a factor. But having him back in is a huge boost. In both its losses (road losses to Florida State and Virginia), the Cards scored just 68 and 55 points, respectively.
Before Snider went down, he was averaging 12.1 points per game and dishing out 4 assists per game. That's a lot of offense coming back for a team that, right now, owns the fourth-most efficient offense in the ACC. With only one ranked team left on the schedule, it couldn't come at a better time.
3. ACC run coming? Of Louisville's next seven games, in only one -- a road trip to North Carolina on Feb. 22 -- is it not favored in by KenPom. Should the Cardinals run the table in the league, they will have 14 ACC wins -- the same number North Carolina won the league with just a season ago.
The North Carolina Tar Heels have emerged not only as an ACC front-runner, but a legitimate candidate to contend for a No. 1 seed in the Big Dance. Yet right now, UNC is only one game up in the conference standings on Florida State, and two games up on Louisville.
