Last week at this time, Louisville had everything Memphis wanted.

A national ranking. An NCAA Tournament résumé so airtight that there was no reason to even think the dirty letters N-I-T. A season-long streak of never being blown out of a game. A coach who led a team to the 1996 Final Four, went pro, went bust, then came back to college and earned his immense salary with a time-lapse turnaround of a downtrodden program.

After a major momentum swing in Freedom Hall last Wednesday and an eventful weekend, the two programs suddenly have a whole lot more in common.

Memphis played brilliantly in upsetting Louisville 80-73 -- punishing the Cardinals on the glass, scoffing at their pressure defense, hitting big shots and controlling the game from shortly after the opening tip. Then the Tigers kept their current hot streak alive with a win at South Florida.

They're now 18-5 and riding a seven-game winning streak, and could well be favored in all four remaining regular-season games. They cracked the rankings at No. 24 in the AP poll. And coach John Calipari can finally end 14 consecutive months of lobbying, fillibustering and complaining about why his team deserves an NCAA bid. You're in, Johnny Boy!

	Rick Pitino says he expected a few February losses, but remains confident in Louisville will right itself in March.

(That takes some of the pressure off a coach whose Dajuan Wagner Experiment last year resulted in nothing more glorious than a second straight trip to the NIT. Compared to Rick Pitino's brisk work at Louisville, Calipari was playing catch-up after starting out ahead. Cal took a big step toward catching up last week.)

The Cardinals, meanwhile, staggered out of that game against Memphis and into an ambush at Cincinnati last Saturday. A team that had lost three games all season by a total of 10 points was pounded by 21 -- and it wasn't even that close. They were down 31 when Rick Pitino had himself tossed with 11 minutes to play, sparing himself the postgame handshake with Bob Huggins.

(Louisville did at least do a good deed for the league, getting the bubblicious Bearcats and Tigers both the wins they needed to make this a four-bid conference.)

Today the Cards are wondering how to recapture the fire that built a 17-game winning streak -- and wondering whether the rest of the league has poisoned them with the zebras.

Welcome to college basketball 2003, a week-to-week proposition if ever there was one. This week it's Memphis is chesty and on the move. Louisville is paranoid and losing ground.

Suddenly the two ancient rivals have identical 9-3 league records, trailing only 11-2 Marquette. As of right now, Memphis would have the No. 2 seed in the C-USA tournament and Louisville No. 3.

"It's been a pretty good ride," Calipari said.

This is a crisp turnabout from just a month ago, when the Tigers had lost three of four games to suspect competition: Saint Louis (which has since proven its worth, especially at home), South Florida and Southern Mississippi, which somehow whomped Memphis by 17. Suddenly those rousing early wins over Syracuse and Illinois seemed ancient history.

At that point, Calipari said it was time to find out about his team's character.

"They had to be on life support -- and want to live," he said. "They could go on life support and just quit. ...

"I took responsibility for the three losses. I went public and said, 'This is on me.'"

The players followed suit, accepting responsibility and assuming accountability. The only thing missing was a group hug. Memphis was back.

Now the Tigers begin their offense inside with muscleman Chris Massie -- who is doing for Memphis some of what Corliss Williamson did for Arkansas in the mid-90s -- but don't end it there. Everyone else has risen around him.

Massie led Memphis in scoring for the first six games of January -- including two of those three losses. In this seven-game streak, Massie has only led the team in scoring once.

"He is, right now, as good a leader as I have coached," Calipari said. "He doesn't care about numbers. If he's triple-teamed, he'll throw it out. If he's single-teamed, he'll score the ball."

Or go to the line and score. A guy who struggled at the line last year has made 21 of 25 during the winning streak.

Massie has started to see single coverage inside because point guard Antonio Burks, forwards John Grice and Rodney Carney, and guards Jeremy Hunt and Billy Richmond all are providing perimeter firepower and/or slashing ability. Throw in 7-footer Earl Barron off the bench, back from a sprained ankle, and this is now a very difficult team to defend.

Burks was the key to upsetting Louisville, outrunning traps with ease. In the last three games, the hard-boiled junior is averaging T.J. Ford/Chris Thomas numbers: 18 points and 7.3 assists.

"He may be playing as well as any point guard in the country right now," Calipari said. "His speed is a weapon for our team. His pressure on the ball and active defense are a weapon.

"We have eight guys averaging 9 points a game. That's big. Great balance will start with your point guard."

As fast as Calipari's mouth moves in promoting his team this week, it moved just as quickly last week talking about officiating -- especially as it related to Louisville.

"We have an NCAA Final Four crew on that game, which means you're not going to have all the hand-checking and pushing and shoving," Calipari said before playing a Cardinals team often accused of hand-checking, pushing and shoving. "That's why this crew being on the game should be interesting and fun, so we all get to find out where we are."

Pitino was not amused then, and even less amused after a game that saw his team shoot 12 fewer free throws at home. On his postgame radio show he termed Calipari's shamelessly loaded comments "amateurish and unethical."

But that was nothing compared to the tumult in Cincinnati. The Cards were called for an astonishing 40 personal fouls and four technicals, in a game that dragged on longer than 2˝ hours. The Bearcats shattered the C-USA record for free throw attempts with 58.

After the game Pitino disclosed that the league sent out a recent communique saying that increased attention will be paid to hand-checking. You got the feeling that Pitino got the feeling that it was aimed specifically at his team.

Pitino also asked for and received a closed-door meeting with C-USA associate commissioner Brian Teter right there in Shoemaker Center. Teter described the exchange as "very civil."

But while the theories on Louisville's three-losses-in-four-games slide pile up (the refs, the shrinking production of Marvin Stone, questionable decision-making from Reece Gaines, a suddenly unreliable bench) Pitino refuses to join the panic. In fact, Sunday he watched what he considers his team's three best performances of the year -- wins over Kentucky, East Carolina and Tennessee -- and pronounced that his team "exactly the same" now as then.

"So the answer is that we're seeing what we all thought we would see," Pitino said. "February will bring the bumps in the road. We're doing nothing different, but when you play at Saint Louis, at Marquette for a great win, a great Memphis team at home and at Cincinnati, which is a Top 25 team in the RPI, it's going to be tough.

"It's nothing we're doing wrong. It's just that our opponents are very, very good."

Indeed, the current stretch of schedule is the toughest in the league. No other top-shelf C-USA team plays four straight league games against NCAA Tournament teams, as Louisville is currently with Marquette-Memphis-Cincinnati-Marquette.

"February will bring the losses," Pitino said. "It's how we respond to those losses that will determine how good a tournament team we will be."

Games of the Week

Marquette at Louisville Thursday Your officiating crew is a veteran one: Ted Hightower, Steve Olson and Mike Kitts. Gentlemen, get ready for a challenge from the home fans and home coach, who believe they've been getting the shaft recently. If this comes close to matching the classic in Milwaukee, it's Must See TV. Cincinnati at Memphis Saturday Bearcats could be the last team with a legitimate shot at knocking off the streaking Tigers before the postseason begins. But Cincy hasn't been a great road team this year. Kentucky at Georgia Sunday Wildcats looking to become the first SEC team to run the table in league play since the '96 Cats, who did it on their way to the national title. This is one of two major tests remaining, the other being at Florida (March 8).

Spirit of Saint Louis
Outside of Memphis, the hottest team in Conference USA is Saint Louis. The 12-12 Billikens have won four in a row, and against quality competition. The winning streak includes an upset of Louisville and back-to-back road wins over Cincinnat and DePaul -- their first road victories of the year.

(The Blue Demons' one-point loss might have eliminated DePaul's hopes for an at-large NCAA bid.)

Margin of victory in those three games is a total of five. Clearly Saint Louis is living right and playing well at crunch time. And it has Marque Perry around to take over.

Perry had the game-winning basket with three seconds left against Louisville, the game-clinching free throws in the final 20 seconds against Cincinnati and a near-length-of-the-court drive for the winner with two seconds left against DePaul. (He then turned around and stole the Blue Demons' inbounds pass to clinch it.)

"He's won games for us in every imaginable way," coach Brad Soderberg said of the 6-1 senior guard. "... He's done it not just one, not just two, not just three times, but he's won probably a half-dozen games for us in the final minutes."

Perry is 6th in the league in scoring at 17.3 points per game, but that's deceiving. Saint Louis only averages 60.6.

Perry is scoring 28.4 percent of his team's points. For comparison's sake, Marquette's Dwyane Wade (21.3 ppg, 1st) is scoring 27.3 percent of his team's, and Louisville's Reece Gaines (18.6 ppg, 2nd) is at 22.7 percent.

"I've been a little bit surprised we haven't seen more gimmick defenses, box-and-one or triangle-and-two or diamond-and-one," Soderberg said.

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