Louisville dominates frustrated Notre Dame

The Big East has seen the future, and it looks like the currents in the Ohio River. Louisville made it that way Friday night, earning its way into a Saturday night meeting against Cincinnati at Madison Square Garden. The game will decide the title for a conference expanding its geographical horizons.

Louisville reached the final by totally throttling Notre Dame, 64-50, dominating every phase of the game, including play near the basket, which had been an Irish strength. Louisville's Gorgui Dieng outscored Notre Dame big man Jack Cooley 16-11 and stood out during the deciding 26-4 spurt at the end of the first half.

It will be the first Big East final without one of the original conference members. "I think Conference USA has come to the Big Apple," Louisville coach Rick Pitino said.

Of Dieng, who shot 8-for-8 from the field, Pitino said: "He is a terrific player. We're very fortunate to have him in our program because he's one of the most popular people on campus. The sky's the limit as to how good he can become down the road."

The Cardinals will play a team from its own neck of the woods after Cincinnati upset top-seeded Syracuse -- one of the teams abandoning the Big East.

Notre Dame has become one of the league's stalwarts, which is a bit of a touchy subject. It never has reached the conference tournament final. This was their third consecutive trip to the Big East Tournament semifinal, and the Irish believed that this finally would be their chance to spend Saturday night in New York.

That feeling grew during an ascendant, overachieving season and increased with a grinding overtime win over South Florida on Thursday night. After that game, Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said: "It's something we've talked about in our program for a while. It's the next step."

Who could deny the Irish that dream after all the steps they did take, following a stumbling November? There was a 29-point loss to Missouri and a dispiriting home defeat to Georgia, not considered a strong team. If that were not discouraging enough, soon after that, Notre Dame lost Tim Abromaitis, a preseason first-team all-Big East selection, for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

In retrospect, that seemed to take pressure off Notre Dame. The team reinvented itself as a more methodical defense-first unit. It won in double overtime at Louisville on Jan. 7, after which Brey said, "We saw a young team maybe grow up before our eyes." And two weeks after that, the Irish beat Syracuse, the only team to do so until Cincinnati did it Friday.

And now the Big East title will be an Ohio-Kentucky border tussle.