Mike Pegues steps in as Louisville basketball looks to turn the page against No. 9 Duke
For most of a month, Mike Pegues was the voice of Louisville basketball.
Months before U of L parted ways with head coach Chris Mack this week, the university suspended him for his handling of firing assistant coach Dino Gaudio, and for much of November, Pegues — as the Cardinals’ acting head coach — ran the show in practices and games.
Pegues went 5-1 as the man in charge and is back in the saddle Saturday against No. 9 Duke, taking over as the Cards’ interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
And though this week has been a challenge for Pegues and his players, his return to the first seat on the bench might not be.
“I think that towards the end of his head coaching position in that little six-game run, I think we really started to buy in to what we had to say and really listening to him,” center Malik Williams said Friday. “The transition back (to Mack) was difficult for us. I don’t believe that we ever got over it.”
U of L basketball's interim head coach: What to know about Mike Pegues
Maybe if Mack hadn’t missed this first six games, Williams said, things would be different.
Maybe the season wouldn’t have been such a struggle. Maybe Mack and his team wouldn’t have been the victim of the disconnect interim coach Josh Heird alluded to on Wednesday when Louisville announced the approval of a separation agreement with Mack.
Mack’s six-game suspension “had a larger impact on our team than I expected it would,” Pegues said Friday, noting that Mack returned after 20 days to a team “in a different place than he left it,” that as head coach he was forced to "re-learn a playbook that had changed drastically” in his absence.
And somewhere along the line, the team’s issues compounded and Mack’s frustration clearly grew.
Williams said that he and Mack had “probably our most difficult year,” admitting that as a fifth-year senior he felt “stuck in the same place” and that he struggled some days to bring the “same energy and pop.” He and Mack butted heads about it, Williams said.
Those weren’t Mack’s only struggles. He admitted he hadn’t found the way to motivate his team, expressed irritation with the team’s inconsistency and his own inability to rectify it.
“I feel like he was frustrated, and I feel like he had that right, just like we all were,” guard Jarrod West said. “No one likes losing.”
West said he didn’t view Mack’s separation from the school as quitting on the team. Nor did Williams, who saw the coach’s exit as a decision Mack made “for us.”
“The way that he went out, I believe it was as a man,” Williams said. "He stood on the mistakes that he made, and he understood that he couldn’t make that connection with us. He talked to us about that and he touched on that. I think that said a lot about him and just who he was.”
It’s Pegues’ job now to guide his team through the aftermath, and to try and salvage what’s left of the season.
Pegues called off practice on what he called an “emotional” Wednesday. Instead, he held an evening team meeting. In it, he said, he told his players, “Let’s get everything off our chests. Let’s air whatever grievances we may have. Let’s say whatever we have to say. Because come Saturday at noon, the Duke Blue Devils will not care about our emotions. They will not.”
The message to the team, West said, “We’re not gonna crawl to the finish line; we’re gonna sprint through it.”
It figures to be a taxing run, starting when Louisville (11-9, 5-5 ACC) hosts Duke (16-3, 6-2) on Saturday at the KFC Yum Center to kick off the second half of the Cads’ 20-game ACC schedule.
After Louisville’s loss at Virginia on Monday, Mack in his final postgame news conference as head coach said the league schedule “is backloaded, and so that obviously is daunting.”
He was right about that.
John Calipari on Louisville basketball: ‘In a couple years, they’ll be right there’
Louisville played eight different teams in its first 10 ACC games, and those eight opponents enter Saturday with a combined winning percentage of .493 in conference games. The nine teams the Cardinals will play in their final 10 ACC games have a combined conference winning percentage of .568.
In the first half of the conference schedule, Louisville played three games against the seven teams currently ahead of it in the ACC standings. It will play seven such games in the back half — one each against Miami, Duke, Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Virginia and two against North Carolina. Four of those games are on the road.
If the Cardinals have any advantage, it’s that Pegues at least is not coaching them for the first time. It’s a tall task squaring off with Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski — coaching his final game at the Yum Center ahead of his retirement at the end of the season — but it could be worse.
“I can literally say it’s not my first rodeo. It’s not,” Pegues said. “I haven’t done it for years like the guy I’m gonna be coaching against (Saturday). He’s the GOAT. I get that. But at least I’ve done it before.”
And he’ll do it again, until the season ends.
Pegues doesn’t know what the future holds after that.
The connection he forged with the Cardinals earlier in the season — and that 5-1 record — could serve him well as a head coaching candidate in the future. And who knows what could happen if he launches Louisville back into national relevance?
Pegues is looking at the rest of the season as a chance to be there for a group of players who have “been through more than arguably any team in the country,” he said. He’s not considering it as an audition for the permanent head coaching job at Louisville.
“I don’t care about that. I really don’t,” he said. "I want to beat Duke. If beating Duke and winning other games beyond that puts me in that position, great. But I have no ambition of doing anything other than being there for these young men and beating Duke on Saturday. I’m going one hour at a time. Not even one day at a time.”
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball looking forward with Mike Pegues as Duke visits
