CARDS AREN'T FLYING AS HIGH LATELY

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 29, 1992                   TAG: 9201290197
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
CARDS AREN'T FLYING AS HIGH LATELY
The sun doesn't shine quite as bright on Denny Crum's old Kentucky home these days.
That is not to say his Louisville basketball program has turned crummy. However, after four NCAA Final Four appearances - including two championships - in seven years, the Cardinals haven't flown quite as high in the past 5 1/2 seasons.
"It goes in cycles," Crum said after his 24th-ranked team surprisingly shot its way to a 78-68 victory at Virginia Tech on Tuesday night. "You do the best you can with the players you get."
Since the 1986 NCAA title, Crum's teams have averaged 21 wins per season, but also double figures in losses, going from a great program to very good.
At Louisville, they seem to be buying Crum's cyclical theory. A few weeks ago, he signed a five-year contract extension, through the 1997-98 season. Don't be surprised if Robin Leach makes a rich-and-famous stop by Crum's farm one of these days.
Crum's base salary, TV/radio and shoe deals bring him about $400,000 annually. That's doesn't include his endorsements with a car dealer, restaurant, furniture store and cellular phone company. The past two seasons, he has earned his big bucks.
Last winter, after Crum's program was vilified for a low graduation rate and the signing of three Proposition 48 players, the Cardinals finished an unheard-of last in the Metro Conference. But Crum always has said it isn't how you start, but how you finish.
In the Metro Tournament final, Louisville was just a 27-foot Florida State bomb from making the NCAA Tournament. This season, Crum has three starters who are in their first season of college hoops.
The Cards came to Tech ranked 24th and left 12-4. That's not bad for a team with three starters shooting below 40 percent. Even some of Louisville's glory teams lacked the dominating big man. However, Crum has never had a team this small.
"In the four games we've lost, we're like 7-for-55 from 3-point range," Crum said. "We can't make free throws, and our two seniors [Cornelius Holden and Everick Sullivan] have struggled of late until this game.
"Considering that, 12-4 is not bad. When you have a young team like this one, what happens is that they don't always recognize where the open man is, and, when something doesn't work, they don't have the patience to run it again."
The Cards' start is their third best in the past eight seasons, and if Louisville is to return to its traditional February flourish, Holden and Sullivan must do more than show their younger teammates how to score.
The grueling schedule always toughens Louisville, and the Metro tourney returns to Freedom Hall in March. It's likely, however, that in the NCAA the sub-compact Cards will go only as far as their inconsistent shooting takes them.
Bill Foster has the first Tech team in years that realizes "guard" can be a verb as well as a noun. Still, Louisville had a 74 percent-shooting second half. The next half may be 39 percent, like the first one Tuesday night.
With his youngest team in 21 Louisville seasons, Crum still is trying to figure out what's in the Cards.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB