What Louisville Needs To Improve Upon Moving Into ACC Play
(Photo of Carlik Jones: Scott Utterback/Louisville Courier-Journal/USA TODAY Sports)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Heading into the current season, there was a large amount of uncertainty surrounding the Louisville men's basketball program. Due to graduation, the NBA Draft and the transfer portal, the Cardinals returned just seven scholarship players from last season. This group accounted for just 24.6% of their scoring, 28.5% of its rebounding, 24.4% of its assists and 10.6% of its three-point goals.
With losing so much production, it raised a wide variety of questions. Can Radford grad transfer Carlik Jones perform at the Power Five level? Will David Johnson continue to build off the stellar second half of his freshman year? Can Samuell Williamson live up to his McDonalds All-American billing? Can Jae'Lyn Withers step up in place of the injured Malik Williams after his redshirt year? How will the three incoming freshmen perform?
Through the early goings of the season, most of those questions have been answered in a relatively positive manner. Jones leads the team in both scoring (16.7 ppg) and assists (5.0 apg), while his backcourt counterpart Johnson is right behind him in both categories (13.6 ppg, 4.1 apg). Williamson & Withers both average 9.6 points per game, and are just under the seven rebounds per game mark (6.8 & 6.9 respectively). Dre Davis has cracked the starting rotation as a freshman with 8.9 points & 3.4 rebounds per game, and JJ Traynor is a solid first-year option off the bench with 6.1 & 3.4 per game.
As a result, by and large, the Cardinals have exceeded most people's expectations. Following their Battle of the Bluegrass win over Kentucky, Louisville now sits at 6-1 with NCAA Tournament resume-building wins over Seton Hall and Western Kentucky. With their non-conference schedule now complete, the team now has a few days off for Christmas before they gear up for the rest of ACC play, starting at Boston College on Jan. 2.
But, like their record, the Cardinals are not perfect. Anyone who has watched their last three games can certainly attest to that, as they have not played the sharpest of basketball as of late.
Their lone blemish on the season came in spectacular fashion, as their 37-point blowout at Wisconsin was their worst loss in 64 years. Their ACC opener at Pitt had the early makings of a blowout in their favor before the Panthers made a run through the middle portion of the game, and their matchup vs. Kentucky was one of the ugliest basketball games you will ever watch.
"Not many times that you can not play very well and beat Kentucky, but I thought that's what happened today," head coach Chris Mack said Saturday after their win over the Wildcats. "We didn't play great and Kentucky had a lot to do with it, they're really athletic and long. I know that they're really inexperienced, but we are as well and that's what it looked like there for a while."
The Atlantic Coast Conference is one of best basketball conferences in Division I. Louisville will be tested night in and night out, no matter who they have to lace 'em up against. In order to come out relatively unscathed, or at least with an above .500 conference record, the Cardinals will have to make some noticeable improvements in a few areas.
One of the the first things that jumps out in their recent games is the level at which they turn the ball over. In their first four games of the season, it was just 11.3 times per game. Against Wisconsin, Pitt and Kentucky, it has ballooned to 16.0 turnovers per game.
Louisville has been doing it in a wide variety of ways, too. From simple errant passes or bad decision making, to shot clock violations and simply running out of bounds. You could maybe get away with such silly mistakes against a Boston College or Wake Forest, but they will have no shot against the upper-echelon ACC teams if this trend keeps up.
Louisville also has to be more effective on offense. Sure, turnovers play a large role in overall offensive efficiency, but it's not the only factor. In the last few games, there have been several instances, especially vs. Kentucky, where the offense devolves into iso-ball with the other four players on the court having little involvement in the play.
"I thought our offense really hurt us in the first half. We were just way to stagnant and I have to find that balance," Mack said. "We are putting the ball in David and Carlik's hands, but the other three guys can't just sit there."
The Cardinals' scoring average was 77.8 points per game through their first four contests, but 58.0 points in their last three. Of course, teams like Evansville & Prairie View A&M are a lot different than Wisconsin & Kentucky, especially when coming off a nearly three-week gap in action, but Louisville still needs to work on their offensive prowess regardless.
For the team whose offense doesn't revolve a lot around shooting the three ball, Louisville will have to continue to find ways to make plays in the paint. Whether that's Carlik Jones & David Johnson making the right decisions when penetrating the lane, or Dre Davis & Jae'Lyn Withers backing down on their man and fighting through contact at the rim.
"It's the name of the game for our team. It's the name of the game," Mack said. "We're not going to face a team – maybe Carolina – that's as long and as big as Kentucky and really teaches blocking shots. We did, for the most part, a pretty good job of when we got in the lane making good decisions."
Finally, while Louisville has been fairly adept on the defensive side, as they have the fourth-best scoring defense in the ACC (61.4 ppg), there's one mark where they are lacking and need to improve greatly on: forcing turnovers.
Through their seven games on the season, the Cardinals average just 4.3 steals and 11.86 forced turnovers per game. Out of the 330 D1 teams who have seen action so far this season, those marks are good for 308th and 285th, respectively.
Mack's pack-line defense has done a good job of keeping shots from falling, as Louisville has allowed opponents to shoot just 42.8% on two point shots (29th in D1), but strangely it hasn't forced a lot of turnovers.
This could be due to the fact that Louisville is a fairly inexperienced team, as they are the seventh-youngest active D1 team in the nation according to KenPom.com, so many facets of Louisville's game will only get better over time.
Make no mistake, the Cardinals have done plenty right through the first month of the season. After all, they're not 6-1 for no reason. But if they can improve on the turnovers on both ends of the floor and their at-times stagnant offense, conference play will be a lot more manageable for Louisville.
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