Louisville basketball: Christen Cunningham’s health a question mark

Louisville basketball guard, Christen Cunningham, missed Friday’s game with a concussion but looks to be okay leading up to the big matchup with Kentucky. Losing him would be a huge blow to the Cards chances of pulling off the upset.

The play from Chris Mack’s Louisville basketball program looked completely different on Friday night against one of the nation’s worst teams, Robert Morris. Why is that? Well, there’s probably a lot of reasons for the struggles, none that would be acceptable in my opinion, but one of the biggest factors for Louisville’s poor first half play was more about what was missing from the court than what was actually on it.

Not having senior guard Christen Cunningham, who missed Friday’s game with concussion-like symptoms after taking a hard fall in practice, seemed to mess with the flow and confidence of the Cards. While they spent quite a bit of time going “through the motions” playing with a sense of “we’ll beat this team no matter what” which is not unexpected against a team who came in losing four straight games and came on the heels of several players leaving for a short Christmas break, they often times looked lost and confused and out of whack offensively.

Cunningham, who is in his first and only season at Louisville as a graduate transfer, came to the Cards with high expectations, but not because of his scoring prowess or ability to take over big games. Instead it was his passing and ability to “right the ship” and provide leadership to his guys that the coaching staff and fans were expecting to see him provide at an elite level.

Coming into Friday night’s matchup with Christen Cunningham in the lineup the Cards were putting up just “average” numbers in the assist, turnovers per game, and assist to turnover ratio departments, something to me that seemed to be a bit out of the norm. While I don’t keep up with stats like that often, my eye would’ve led me to believe that this team plays together and puts up more than 13.1 assists (ranked t-223 in the nation) and less than 12.3 turnovers per game (t-81st).

Against Robert Morris the Cards offense as mentioned before was slow, lethargic and a bit lost. Chris Mack addressed that in his post game press conference saying:

"“To me this game was about our inability to be ready to play and we were playing up hill the entire game and it was because of having the wrong mindset… Obviously it’s a different game for us with CC being out, everybody moves up a notch on the food chain in terms of ball handling responsibilities and we didn’t handle that very well.”"

Louisville finished the second half strong against Robert Morris picking up their 9th win of the season 73-59, but they did so in the process of turning the ball over 16 times (compared to RMU’s 10) and only compiled 10 assists, their third lowest total of the season.

The numbers wouldn’t lead you to believe that the things he brings to table are being used at a high level, but again the numbers don’t always tell the story. While CC has struggled to be consistent as a scorer and even as a passer at the point guard position, it’s been his ability to make the right play at the right time that’s helped this offense play so well this season.

It goes without saying that if Christen Cunningham weren’t able to suit up for Saturday’s game against Kentucky the Cards would be in an extremely tough spot. In the Cards four games this season against team that were ranked at the time, or are ranked as of now, Cunningham has averaged 13.3 points per game and 3 assists per game while the Cards have averaged 12 assists per game to just 10 turnovers.

While it doesn’t seem likely that Cunningham will miss Saturday’s game due to concussion like symptoms, but with that type of injury you never know. When it comes to a potential head injury programs typically keep things close to the vest and play it extremely safe. For example, Indiana’s starting point guard Rob Phinisee was injured during a win against Central Arkansas on December 18th and still hasn’t been cleared to return over a week later and has already been ruled out from IU’s next game.

Those injuries may not be comparable in terms of severity, but it’s just to point out that concussions are no injury to be taken lightly.

The Cards have a huge opportunity to pull off the upset at home against the 16th ranked Kentucky Wildcats, who are coming off a huge win against #14 ranked North Carolina on Saturday. As the two programs come into the biggest rivalry game of the season, the health of Christen Cunningham is something to watch closely.