Evaluating Louisville's roster
It's better than last year, that's for sure
The mandate for UofL’s coaching staff this offseason was to improve the roster dramatically, and that has been done. BartTorvik.com has projections up for the 2024 season, and he assigns each team a “talent” score based on the recruiting ranking of players, weighted by expected minutes played. He projects Louisville as the 2nd most talented team in the country:
This has all the makings of Louisville winning the “offseason champions” award, which is terrific for morale but unfortunately doesn’t count towards any actual wins. The Cardinals are going to need to demonstrate real improvement on the court next season. Let’s take a look at 3 significant questions:
How much better is the roster than last season?
What are the strengths of the improved talent?
Where are the skill gaps?
The talent is improved, but was talent the issue?
As I noted above, Louisville is rated by one source as potentially having the second most talented rotation in college basketball next season. If you look at that table, you’ll notice that same source projects a 12-19 record for the Cards as well because recruiting rankings don’t really have a lot to do with outscoring opponents. Michigan and Syracuse also are projected to have talent, but pedestrian records.
Louisville’s talent is a lot better than last season, when Bart Torvik rated Louisville as almost exactly at the ACC average by the same talent metric. Over the past 12 seasons, Louisville’s number of wins has absolutely no significant relationship with their talent rating. Last season was the lowest talent rating for the Cards in that 12 year time frame and had the fewest wins, but the 2019 and 2014 seasons also graded out poorly in the “talent” metric and resulted in much better seasons.
“Talent” in this case is quantified by recruiting ranking out of high school, and last season Louisville actually had 5 top-80 recruits:
Louisville has replaced them with Skyy Clark, Tre White, Dennis Evans, Trentyn Flowers, Ty-laur Johnson, Kaleb Glenn, and Curtis Williams, who all are top-100 recruits. Last season 4 of the 5 touted recruits had little meaningful impact, with Mike James the exception. Louisville needs several of their incoming players to be dramatically better than anyone on last year’s team, and needs all of them to be ACC-level contributors. That’s a big ask.
Last season Louisville’s talent rating was higher than Miami’s, just to give one relevant example from their conference. Miami had significantly more proven contributors, however. Louisville was not able to add any proven contributors this season at all, which is worrisome. Only 1 player on Louisville’s roster next season has ever scored more than 9ppg in college, and that is Mike James; the fact that he did so on a 4-28 team is definitely a blemish in his resume. Last season El Ellis and Jae’lyn Withers led the Cards in points scored per 40 minutes at 19.6 (Ellis) and 14.2 (Withers). None of the projected 2024 Cardinals have scored at Withers’ level on a per-40 minute basis, much less Ellis’. There will almost definitely be an adjustment period while this roster gels. In the meantime, where will there be immediate improvement?
Defensive improvement in the Cards
Before last season, I studied how college teams with length on the wing tended to perform and found some interesting takeaways:
I predicted turnover issues (although the extent was more than I imagined) and significant benefit on defense. The defense did not, in fact, benefit from length in any way. It remains to be seen how the pieces fit together on this year’s roster, but I believe Louisville will actually see much more of the benefit of length on defense this season.
First, Louisville will actually have a rim protector in Dennis Evans. The Cards were the 11th worst team in the country in FG% allowed at the rim last season, while they were middle of the pack in allowing shot attempts at the rim. If Evans plays the majority of minutes at center, the Cards won’t be hopelessly lost defending the rim anymore.
Second, the defensive rebounding should also be much improved. This is one of the stats that tends to pop for teams who have length on the wing, but nobody on Louisville except Withers was an above average rebounder for their position. Both Skyy Clark and Tre White were above average rebounders last season at guard/wing spots, as was Koron Davis in JUCO and Dennis Evans and Kaleb Glenn in high school/grassroots.
Finally, Louisville should have a bit better defense at the point of attack this season. While Ty-Laur Johnson doesn’t have much size, he was 4th in Overtime Elite in steal rate during the regular season. Skyy Clark showed strong defensive instincts on tape, and Mike James was one of the few Cardinals last season who worked to contain ballhandlers.
I do have some major questions in other areas, however.
So, who is scoring and shooting again?
As I noted above, Louisville does not have any players whose per-40 minute scoring exceeded that of either of their veteran departures (Ellis and Withers). In my previous articles I also noted that Louisville doesn’t have anyone who is used to taking on the primary scoring burden when in the game. I am very concerned that the Cards have a lot of secondary scorers but nobody who seems to be an alpha scorer in college:
Tre White took 19.7% of USC’s shots when he was in the game, and scored 13.4 pts per 40 min
Skyy Clark took 15.8% of Illinois’ shots when he was in the game, and scored 11.4 pts per 40 min
These players were very much supporting members of solid but unspectacular major conference programs, and now will need to try to become more aggressive and assertive. It’s theoretically possible, but most transfers who improve their scoring do so moving down a level or have had large offensive roles in limited minutes at previous stops.
Outside shooting is also likely to be an issue for UofL. They were 228th in D-1 last season, hitting just under 33% from deep. Only Withers exceeded 36% and he’s gone. Mike James hit 35.7%, but of the newcomers only Trentyn Flowers comes in with a rep as a shooter. Skyy Clark hit just 33% at Illinois, Tre White was at 27% at USC, and Ty-Laur Johnson hit 27% for Overtime Elite.
I’m not really sure where Louisville’s strengths will lie on offense. Tre White was a terrific finisher at the rim last season, but will there be any space for him to get there? Maybe Skyy Clark’s shooting bounces back, but will he have to take on the lead ballhandling role instead of getting open threes?
Louisville executed a massive roster turnover, and that was sorely needed after a disastrous season. I’m still very unclear on the vision for this team and how they’re going to establish a winning program. That’s on the staff, now that they went out and got pieces…this is when the hard work begins.