Player grades: Louisville basketball outmuscled by Kentucky

Louisville basketball fell behind midway through the first half, and was never able to pull even with a tough Kentucky team.

Kentucky adds another win to their dominant record against Louisville basketball since John Calipari joined the program.

The Cats jumped out to a quick lead, and never looked back on Saturday. After a back-and-forth first few minutes where both teams played very free-flowing on offense, Kentucky blew things open with an 11-0 run that stretched their lead from 20-17 to 31-17.

In that stretch in the first half, UK outmuscled, outworked, and out-shot the Cards. Louisville settled for quick, contested shots, and Kentucky capitalized.

UK went into halftime with an 8-point lead. That lead was cut to 6 with a quick Christen Cunningham mid-range jumper on the first posession of the second half. But Kentucky scored on the ensuing offensive posession, turned the Cards over again, and that 10 point lead held the rest of the way.

Louisville was forced to play from behind the entire game. While their defense was pretty solid, and was often able to create confusion for a younger Kentucky team, Louisville looked awful on offense. Kentucky was able to use their strength and length to push the Cards’s offense further away from the basket, and they forced Louisville to run their offense from an uncomfortable position.

The Cats used the final 10 minutes to just run out the clock. The held the ball on offense until 10 or 15 seconds remained on the clock, and then would catch Louisville sleeping, and were able to take advantage of a mis-match down low, or draw a double team and find an open man.

As it often seems to go in this rivalry, a player who is in a slump had a career game. Kentucky’s Tyler Herro recorded a career-high 24 points on 10-13 shooting, and was 4-6 from downtown in 36 minutes of play. The Cats also had another big-time performance from freshman guard Ashton Hagans, who is a lock-down defender. He had 3 assists, 3 steals, and 11 points.

The storyline of the game was that Kentucky has turned the corner on both ends of the floor. They are using their athleticism in the backcourt, and muscle up front to just physically impose their will against quality teams.

Meanwhile, Louisville seems a bit out of sorts, particularly on offense. Unlike in the Pitino era, where if the Cards were having an ugly shooting night, they could muck things up a little bit and win by using defense to create offense, Chris Mack prefers a more balanced attack. Louisville is still one of Ken Pomeroy’s top 60 teams in the country in defensive efficiency, but it has been their offense that makes them so lethal. For the first time this season, against Robert Morris, and now Kentucky, Louisville’s offense is stagnant, and shots that were falling in some of their earlier performances simply are not.

It’s back to the drawing board for the Cards, as they finish non-conference play 9-4, and head into a grueling ACC slate.

MVP: Christen Cunningham was one of the few players that looked unphased by Kentucky’s defense. Tasked with running the points against Ashton Hagans, an elite on-ball defender, Cunningham limited turnovers, while going 8-14 from the field- good for 20 points- and dishing out 4 of Louisville’s 7 assists. The Cards need Cunningham to continue playing at this level if they want to make it to the postseason.

LVP: Darius Perry likely played one of the worst games of his career. We rarely assign the LVP award to a UofL player, but it was obvious that Perry was bothered by UK and tried to force things way too much. After scoring on the first two possessions of the game, Perry only played 15 more minutes. He is charged with five turnovers, but it seemed like a lot more than that. Louisville needs his experience, his ball-handling skills, and his on-ball defending to reach their potential. Here’s to hoping that this performance can get him going.

X-Factor: 36% Shooting. If you are going to beat any top 25 team, you have to knock down your shots. Louisville seemed out of rhythm, even on open shots. Jordan Nwora was red hot from deep coming into the UK game, and finished 1-5 from beyond the arc, and 7-17 overall. VJ King short-armed a couple of open looks, and even Ryan McMahon clanked a wide-open three. The Cards started out 3-3 from deep, and finished 5-20. Normally reliable from the line, Louisville missed 6 out of their 19 free throw attempts, including the front end of a couple of 1-and-1’s.

After all of the negatives from this game, if Louisville knocks down two or three more 3’s, and makes a couple more free throws, they are in it at the end.