Reasons for Concern, Reasons to Not Be Concerned Following UofL's Blowout Loss at UT

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Louisville men's basketball program didn't exactly have a pristine showing this past Tuesday night.

The Cardinals made their way down to Knoxville with the hopes of earning a big time ranked road win against Tennessee. But instead, the Volunteers clocked them early, eventually handing UofL an 83-62 loss from Thompson-Boling Arena.

"Credit to Tennessee," head coach Pat Kelsey said. "They were the better team tonight. [They were] a tough, physical team - Coach Barnes' teams are always that way."

Since going final, the 21-point beatdown has elicited a lot of responses on social media amongst the Cardinals faithful. Primarily, fans have sounded the alarms with UofL getting blasted by another top tier foe, and failing to capitalize on the opportunity to bolster their non-conference resume.

I'm certainly not here to tell you not to have any worries with how Louisville looked on Tuesday night. But last night's result shouldn't be viewed in absolutes. While there are some reasons for concern, there are also as many reasons to have faith that this is not indicative of the team moving forward.

Reasons for Concern

Arguably the single-biggest red flag to come out of the Tennessee game was that it reinforced the notion that Pat Kelsey-led teams have trouble against teams whose calling card is physicality.

Just earlier this month, Louisville faced another athletic, lengthy and overall talented team in Arkansas. The Cardinals got smacked in the mouth early in that game, and couldn't put together a proper response to it.

Of course, it's worth noting that both games were on the road. But last season, we saw a lot of the same against similar teams at home. The first Tennessee game, the matchup against Ole Miss, and both games against Duke. For as much talent that Louisville themselves has, their Kryptonite appears to be teams who want nothing more than to play a football game on hardwood.

We knew in the preseason that the frontcourt was going to lag behind the backcourt in terms of talent/production. But this unit needs to take a collective step forward in terms of their grit when going up against hard-nosed teams.

For instance, last night, Louisville's backcourt secured a combined 13 rebounds, while their frontcourt had just nine. Khani Rooths, Kasean Pryor, Aly Khalifa and Vangelis Zougris collectively hauled in *zero* rebounds in 32 combined on-court minutes.

This team/program has shown a few times now over the last couple seasons that, if they get punched in the mouth, it's going to have a noticeable impact their approach. Kelsey even called them out last night for letting their offense impact their defense.

"That can't happen regardless of what's going on the other side of the floor, it can't affect you from a defensive standpoint. What's happening on the offensive end can't affect you on the defensive end. My gut, without really diving into the tape and watching it, is that happened quite a bit."

Kelsey's not absolved of any blame from last not, either. Some of the coaching decisions he had last night were questionable to say the least. For starters, we know that he likes to push the pace and substitute often. But last night, his substitution patterns didn't do his team any favors.

Adrian Wooley helped Louisville take an early 7-5 lead, but he was subbed out at the 16:33 mark. He came back in less than a minute later at 15:50, but he was one of three players subbing back in at that time. At that point, Tennessee had already started what ended up being a 14-2 run, and Louisville couldn't close the gap for the rest of the game.

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. But if Wooley had remained on the floor for say, the first seven-ish minutes, he could have been someone to help set an early tone and precent the snowballing. Especially if there hadn't been five substitutions in the first 4:10 of the game.

Additionally, I have zero idea what Kelsey was thinking having Isaac McKneely guard Nate Ament for large pockets of the game. McKneely is just 6-foot-4, and while he does have some athleticism, it pales in comparison to a 6-foot-10 potential lottery pick.

Reasons to Not Be Concerned

As previously mentioned, there are genuine reasons to have some concern with the team at present moment. But when talking about the big picture, there are also reasons to not go into full blown "the sky is falling" mode.

Last night's game wasn't a mid-February matchup with the conference tournament just around the corner. It wasn't even in the second half of the season. It was on December 16th, and it was just the 11th game of a 31-game regular season.

Louisville still has two-and-a-half months until the ACC Tournament gets underway. Not to mention that they still have a handful of opportunities to prove that they can cut it with elite teams. They still have the two games against Duke, a road game at North Carolina, and the "neutral-site" matchup with Baylor in Fort Worth. Not to mention the top half of the ACC this season is full of teams who have the potential to spring upsets, like NC State, Virginia and Clemson.

If we get to the end of the regular season, and Louisville continues to come up short in these types of games, then you have reason to be alarmed. But we saw this team just last season overcome a 6-5 start, and fire off a three-month run where they went 21-1. Not to mention, in the wake of that Arkansas game, they put together resounding responses against Indiana and Memphis.

Plus, it bares repeating that Louisville did not have star freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr. at their disposal due to a lower back injury. Sure, Brown has been in a bit of a shooting slump as of late. But he is the Cardinals' second leading scorer at 16.6 points per game, and he is one of the top playmakers in the ACC overall at 5.1 assists per game.

Additionally, the Cardinals did not have Kobe Rodgers for as much as they wanted. He took an inadvertent kick to the head in the closing minutes of the first half, then had to exit again in the second half after taking another hit. Rodgers has been Brown's backup at point guard, and has shown some serious playmaking potential at times to start this season, but could only play 11 minutes against UT.

Louisville not only didn't have their PG1, but their PG2 wasn't even available for half of the game. Would it have changed the final outcome if both played at full capacity? Probably not, but I don't think Louisville gets blown out of the water.

Are there some valid concerns that came out of last night's game? Of course there are. It would be disingenuous to say otherwise. But in the same breathe, both Kelsey and the players have ample time and opportunities to correct things. There is a happy medium between "nothing to see here" and "the sky is falling."

Reasons for Concern

Reasons to Not Be Concerned

More Cardinals Stories