PITTSBURGH — The Louisville Cardinals will be down a couple of key players as they take on the Pitt Panthers at the Petersen Events Center this weekend.

Pitt, who sits on the NCAA Tournament bubble and needs to keep stacking wins to keep their postseason hopes alive, will have the good fortune of facing the Cardinals as they sit Skyy Clark and Ty-Laur Johnson, who are both dealing with injuries according to Eric Crawford of WDRB in Louisville, Kentucky.

Clark has starred 22 of 23 games he’s appeared in this season and is second on the team in scoring at 13.1 points per game. The Illinois transfer is adding 2.9 assists and 3.1 rebounds per game as well.

Johnson comes off the bench primarily but has started seven games as well. He’s averaging nine points per game and leads the team in assists at 3.9 per contest.

The Panthers were already heavy favorites coming into this game but with the Cardinals missing two of their best playmakers, the home team’s job is just a little bit easier.

The gruesome break that shattered Louisville Cardinals guard Kevin Ware’s right lower leg during Sunday’s Elite Eight playoff game was a “freak accident” rare outside of car accidents or other high-velocity trauma, a sports medicine expert said.

The 20-year-old sophomore from the Bronx apparently landed awkwardly in the heat of the NCAA Midwest Final game against the Duke Blue Devils, perhaps exacerbating an undetected stress fracture, said Dr. Frederick Azar, a vice president and spokesman for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and chief of staff at Campbell Clinic in Germantown, Tenn., who consults for the Memphis Grizzlies NBA basketball team.

He may have just landed funny and torqued his tibia,” said Azar, who was watching the game. “It was a freak accident.”

Such injuries, don’t often happen at the low velocity of even high-level basketball, which raises the possibility that Ware had a preexisting stress fracture, Azar said.

The bone in Ware’s lower right leg apparently broke in two places and could be seen sticking out through Ware’s skin, observers said.

“To actually see it happen like that is rare,” Azar said. “A bone sticking out of the skin is really, really unusual.”

The injury, which occurred with 6:33 minutes left in the first half of the game, sent 6-foot-2 Ware to floor, stunned his teammates into sickened sobs and silenced the crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.