Louisville needs to tweak some things
The Cards are making a lot of choices on offense that aren't working out. Where can they find some improvement?
The trip to Maui didn’t go so well. Louisville had one solid half against Cincinnati, but ended up leaving paradise with 3 blowout losses. The Cards have dropped to #171 in KenPom rankings, down from #91 before the season began. The main issue has been on offense, where the Cards rank 227th; they are a more respectable 114th on defense.
A number of issues have contributed to the ugly start to this season. The offense is misusing some key players, the roster construction has left little alternative to major problems, and defensive effort is inconsistent at best. Before I get into all that, I do want to address one common complaint I’ve read about this team: talent.
I don’t believe that a lack of talent is the main factor dooming this team. It seems reasonable to think this team might end up outside the top 200 per KenPom, which is a depressingly low standard for a Power 6 conference team. KenPom rankings go back to 2002, and 40 Power 6 teams have finished the season at 200th or worse. Louisville has 5 players on their roster who were in the top 80 in their high school class per RSCI; only 1 of the 40 Power 6 teams who underachieved so badly had as many. In fact, only 7 of the 40 teams had more than 2 such recruits. These Cards aren’t formerly touted players who have long since washed out, either; all 5 are freshmen or sophomores. The 5 top-80 guys (James, Lands, Ree, Wheeler, Huntley-Hatfield) doesn’t even include the team’s 2 leading scorers, El Ellis or Jae’lyn Withers. Teams who are this bad don’t tend to have talent that other Power 6 teams wanted.
It’s possible that all of those players were misevaluated by recruiting rankings and the coaching staffs who went after them, but that’s not exactly a vote of confidence for this coaching staff who recruited 3 of the 5 top-80 players. Maybe misevaluation of talent has run across the last 2 coaching staffs, but the fact remains that when Power 6 teams struggle this much they almost never have more than a player or two who was recruited heavily by other Power 6 teams.
As I said earlier, the biggest issues I’m seeing are 1) key players miscast on offense, 2) failure of roster construction leaving no alternative to poor performance, and 3) a lack of effort on defense. Let’s dig into each of these.
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