Louisville has 10 regular season games remaining, as it currently stands, six of those games will be Quadrant I opportunities. Even so, none of the 10 teams the Cards will play between now and March 7 appear to be realistic national title contenders (we can check back in on North Carolina in a couple of weeks).
U of L’s last shot against such a team was eight days ago when they got walloped by Duke, 83-52. Losing by such a margin in their final guaranteed shot against an “elite” opponent forced Cardinal fans to recalibrate a bit.
The issue is and continues to be the fact that is that Pat Kelsey doesn’t get a chance to address what I think is the fan base’s biggest collective concern about him — how Louisville has performed against top-tier competition — until mid-March at the very earliest … and if we’re being completely honest, there’s no guarantee at this point that the Cardinals get another shot at one of those types of teams this season.
With that being the case, Louisville fans have two options:
1) Hope that the team gets hot in February, steadily improves in the areas where they’ve struggled in the preceding months, and then fully takes advantage of their shots against elite teams on the big stages of the ACC and NCAA Tournaments.
2) Continue to be bothered by the losses and greet the wins with “talk to me when they beat someone with a pulse” (or something of the like) for the next six weeks.
I’m going with option one.
Celebrating victories and acknowledging steps in the right direction doesn’t mean that you’re Men in Black mind-erasing the lopsided losses to Duke, Arkansas, Tennessee, etc. or the problems that were impossible to ignore throughout those contests, it’s simply recognizing that there has to be some middle ground in this “everything is either the worst ever or the best ever” era of reactionary sports fandom.
Saturday’s win over SMU is a perfect example.
Does beating a current NCAA Tournament team by 14 points make up for the losses to the teams mentioned above? No. Does it instantly vault Louisville back near the top of the conversation surrounding legitimate Final Four teams and national title contenders? Also no.
Is beating a current NCAA Tournament team by 14 points good, cool and fun? Yes.
In my increasingly wrinkled eyes, Louisville played its best half of the season after the halftime break on Saturday. And it needed to. It was the perfect 20 minutes at the perfect time for this squad to hopefully find its stride and have a special final couple of months. Whether or not that actually comes to fruition is to be seen, but any excuse you can find to dream happy dreams at this point in the season should be seized.
There were three things that I liked more than any others about Saturday’s game (specifically, the second half), and we’re going to address them in order here.
1.The Second Half Defense
Anyone who has listened to like 10 minutes of any one of my radio shows over the last two months has probably heard me talk about the need for this team to take its defensive effort to a different level. Last season’s sensational run only occurred because that group realized that it wasn’t even going to flirt with the NCAA Tournament if it didn’t become a dramatically better team on the defensive end.
This year’s team can still make the NCAA Tournament with ease playing the type of defense it’s played up until this point, but it won’t be a real threat to make any sort of magical run. Maybe they’ve finally figured that out. Maybe they haven’t. The second half of Saturday’s game at least gave us a glimmer of hope that the former is the case.
SMU is a supremely talented offensive team. They struggle far more on the defensive end, especially when it comes to guarding the perimeter. This was always going to be a game where Louisville was going to score at least in the 80s. The question was whether scoring in the 80s was going to be enough for them to win comfortably, or if it was going to put them in a position to lose a 93-89 type game that would have been pretty impossible for any of us to stomach.
Trailing 47-44 after the game’s first 20 minutes, Louisville answered the bell in the second half.
The Cards played with a level of desperation (I can’t tell you how much I love Kelsey continuing to invoke this work right now) that we just haven’t seen enough of from them on that end this season. And for all the folks who have been complaining about the lack of in-game adjustments this season (I have been one at times), they fixed the major issue that plagued them defensively in the first half.
SMU shoots the ball well from three, but they don’t shoot it a ton from beyond the arc. The Mustangs’ two best offensive players, Boopie Miller and Jaron Pierre, are pure scorers who are most dangerous tilting the floor and moving toward the basket. Knowing this, and knowing how much the Cards have struggled with preventing straight line drives this season, Louisville came out with the mentality of doing whatever it needed to do to keep SMU’s playmakers from getting into the lane where they could score, draw a foul or find an open teammate.
Louisville’s off-ball defenders were giving their man a little extra space so that they could be there to help cut off a drive if their teammate guarding the ball was about to get beat. This led to open three after open three after open three, and SMU took full advantage.
See exhibits A, B and C here (there are more, but you can find them for yourselves):
In the second half, there was no room allotted to Miller, Pierre, Corey Washington or B.J. Edwards when they were off the ball.
Louisville adjusted properly and dared SMU’s playmakers to beat them inside the arc. They couldn’t do it consistently enough to keep pace with their hosts.
The Cards limited the second highest-scoring team in the ACC to just 27 second half points, their lowest point total in a half since scoring 25 in the first half of a 74-70 loss at Clemson on Jan. 7. The Mustangs made just one three-pointer after halftime, and went 11-of-30 from the field overall.
That’s a proper in-game adjustment from the coaches, proper attention to detail by the players, and the overall level of intensity on that end that should be demanded every second of every game from this point forward.
Let’s see it for a full two halves Wednesday night.
2. Louisville had 20 assists on 31 made shots
With or without Mikel Brown Jr., there’s been a common theme when U of L has struggled offensively this season: The ball sticks. The Cards have been easy to guard for good defensive teams, only because they’ve made themselves easy to guard. The sequence of events is simple and familiar, a lot of dribbling, a few simple passes, no constant motion or anything to make the defense the least bit uncomfortable or confused, and then a low percentage, contested shot from the outside late in the shot clock.
There was rarely a moment where Louisville was easy to guard on Saturday. Even when the team fell behind by 10 points early on, they were getting great looks from the outside for their best shooters who simply weren’t ringing the bell.
After his initial rough stint coming off the bench, Mikel really let the game come to him in the second half (something he and Kelsey apparently had a conversation about following the Duke game), and everyone seemed to follow his lead. Louisville got high percentage looks on the perimeter or near the rim on close to 80 percent of its second half possessions, and almost all of those were set up by the ball being sent to the right place two or three passes before the shot came.
Creating offensive opportunities in transition thanks to strong defensive possessions was also huge.
Turning defense into offense as often as possible is the way, fellas. It’s the only way.
3. Khani Rooths
During every Louisville basketball season of my life except for maybe last year’s, there’s always been one Cardinal player who the fan base has been convinced would solve every problem the team has if he would just get more playing time. Remember four years ago when there were people making legitimate arguments that U of L could be a contender if Fabio Basili just got some more minutes running the point? Those were fun times … I actually can’t even joke about that, those were the fucking worst times.
Anyway, that player this year has very clearly been Khani Rooths.
While his ballhandling and outside shooting haven’t improved enough for him to make the type of “sophomore leap” that would get acknowledged by everyone nationally, it’s not difficult to explain why Cardinal fans are so enamored with Rooths.
He has a combination of size and athleticism that, simply put, no one else on the team can match. He plays with remarkable effort and heart every second he’s on the floor. And I think he’s turned himself into, pound-for-pound, the best and easily the most versatile on-ball defender on this team.
Everything changed on Saturday when Khani Rooths got on the floor and started doing his thing. He sparked the team’s uptick in effort on the defensive end, he electrified a somewhat sleepy home crowd with back-to-back dunks, he treated every attempted shot on both ends like it was his rebound, and he ultimately notched a double-double despite playing just 20 minutes in his first action in three weeks.
It goes without saying that we’re a different team when Khani is giving us this level of production at the four. If he keeps it up, that could easily be one of the biggest positive differences for Louisville the next time they get a shot at a team with elite talent, size and athleticism.
Some additional thoughts …
—J’Vonne Hadley was, per usual, a dog in this game.
This was the first time all season that we’ve seen extended minutes with Hadley and Rooths on the floor at the same time, and it produced some of the best basketball the Cards played all afternoon. I don’t know if you can play Fru/Khalifa/Zou with Hadley and Rooths for extended periods against certain opponents left on our schedule, but I’m curious to see how much we go back to this. I think one thing we’ve absolutely learned with this group over the first three months of the season is that it’s necessary to sacrifice offense for defense at times.
—Mikel in the second half was everything we need him to be in order to have a chance at a special March.
The threes that he took were composed and in rhythm, the drives that he made were well-timed and under control, and the defense he played was effective and consistent.
Make no mistake about it, if there’s a still a route out there for Louisville to make a run to an Elite 8 or beyond, Mikel Brown Jr. is the ticket. Difference makers have to be difference makers in March, and Brown is the biggest potential difference maker Kelsey has on his roster. Seeing him play like this as the calendar flips to February was a major confidence boost.
—Kelsey has talked a few times in recent weeks about using the bench as a motivational tool.
Here’s one way that I would utilize it: If a player is guarding a decent shooter on the perimeter and has his hands below his waist, allowing said shooter to rise and fire with little to no resistance, that player needs to be taken out of the game immediately. There is zero excuse at this level of basketball for defenders to not be in proper guarding position, and yet we’ve seen it from a number of our guys throughout this year (I love you, Adrian, but for the love of all things holy get your hands up).
High hands. High hands. High hands.
—This was the best overall performance that we’ve gotten from Kobe Rodgers in weeks. He doesn’t have to be a superstar for us, he just needs to guard his ass off, not turn the ball over on offense, and take the drive to the basket when it’s open for him. Seven points, four assists, no turnovers and three offensive boards will certainly get the job done.
—Student section, let’s step it up. You guys were tremendous this time last year, you were tremendous during the first six weeks of the season, it’s time to be tremendous again. We’ve got four home games left and we can’t afford to drop any of them.
—Aly Khalifa is now 15-of-28 from three over Louisville’s last seven games. This is no longer a fun little streak, it’s a massive skillset that U of L can exploit when it has the ball in its hands. A month ago, everyone was playing off Aly and daring him to be a scorer. Now that the outside shot has to be respected, it allows Louisville to bring elite shot blockers away from the rim, and also opens up Khalifa’s lethal passing which can get us 6-10 “easy” points off layups every game.
His defense is what it is, and that’s not going to change, but him doing what he’s doing for us on offense right now is a massive development for this stretch run.
Also, I know some of Aly’s limitations around the rim drive the fan base crazy, but how can you not love this guy? The dude is into every second of every game when he’s on the bench, and he’s very clearly one of the primary leaders when he’s on the court. This matters a great deal to him, and he’s not afraid to show that. Those guys are always incredibly easy to root for.
—My dad always said growing up that basketball was a strange game because you could do everything well but one thing and people would say you played a terrible game, but you could also do everything poorly except one thing and everyone would say you played a great game. That one thing, obviously, is shooting.
Ryan Conwell shot just 1-for-11 from three on Saturday, but I still thought he played a very nice overall game. He took mostly good shots, he defended well, he scrapped for loose balls with a ferocity this team desperately needs, and he made the right decisions more times than not on offense.
The shooting will come. It’s all the other little things that he needs to keep doing in order for this team to have a shot to hit its ceiling.
—There is one player every single year whose three-point shots I can correctly predict with near 100 percent accuracy by the end of the season. That player this year is Isaac McKneely.
If he’s fading away at all on his shot, it’s coming up short. If he’s squared up and getting a pass right in the shooter’s pocket, it’s cash. It was nice to see him hit a couple of big ones in the second half that were set up by his teammates. I know he wanted to showcase more of his game this season, but that is his game. That’s where he needs to live over these next six weeks and beyond.
—The 1-3-1 zone returned for a couple of possessions on Saturday. It didn’t look great and it didn’t look awful, but I’m still glad we saw it again. Having options and giving opponents as much to prepare for as possible are both invaluable assets at this time of year.
—Zou making one great pass and then trying to direct traffic a couple possessions later ultimately to attempt a pass to Hadley that missed him by 8-feet and sailed out-of-bounds might have been the highlight of the game on rewatch. I love this guy and I can’t watch anyone else when he’s on the floor.
—I’m hoping to get back into the habit of writing these after every game between now and the end of the season. I’ve missed it and I think at least three of you have missed it as well. The rest of you, as always, can suck it.
Let’s get hot.