Louisville basketball: Cards rally and escape with last second win
A. CC was able to make the plays necessary when it mattered most. It was encouraging to see him score without letting his scoreless outing last game have any impact. His ability to takeover games come tournament time will have a huge impact on how far this team can go.. PG. Louisville Cardinals. CHRISTEN CUNNINGHAM
B. Fore obviously isn’t going to wow you with a sheer amount of scoring but his constant pressure on defense has helped his team almost all year and it was no different tonight. I will say that even though the Clemson player made the three to trim the lead to a one possession game, I liked his decision to not jump at all to risk fouling the shooter. These tiny details can be huge in close games like these.. SG. Louisville Cardinals. KHWAN FORE
Sutton just had an off game this time around, hitting only 2 of his 9 shot attempts. The thing that bothered me the most was him only grabbing two rebounds and that’s been one of his stronger facets of his game. Everyone held their breath when he fell going for the ball on the final possession of the game, but I liked the play that was drawn up for him. However, I think Clemson had the gameplay to play a very sloppy game so I expect Sutton to put this performance behind him.. SF. Louisville Cardinals. DWAYNE SUTTON. D
B. Like a majority of the guys on the team tonight, Jordan’s shot just waste falling. Despite shooting 4-11 from the floor and missing all five of his three point attempts, Jordan has started to show his growth as a player. The game deciding block on defense was one, but the steal he ripped from Skara for Clemson on what was almost a sure score, is a testament to how much he has improved on defense from a season ago. Offensively, Nwora was able to get to the basket when his shot wasn’t falling and at the very least draw a foul.. PF. Louisville Cardinals. JORDAN NWORA
Louisville Cardinals. MALIK WILLIAMS. C. The bigs today seemed to be somewhat hungover from battling against Duke on Tuesday, but Williams was able to secure 7 rebounds and made a big block late in the game to help the Cards.. PF
After coming off of a big game against Duke, Enoch struggled to get anything to fall down low. However it was encouraging to see him consistently hit free throws in a close game without any real issue. I would like to see him used more in a midrange scenario for when the Cardinals face a zone because he has displayed the ability to have a nice touch from outside of the lane.. C. Louisville Cardinals. STEVEN ENOCH. D+
PG. Louisville Cardinals. RYAN MCMAHON. C+. McMahon hasn’t always had success against teams with longer more athletic perimeter defenders so his struggle shooting today was no surprise. That being said he was able to bring the ball up in transition off of a miss and when the press needed breaking, he broke it.
Darius played one of his better games today and for the second game in back-to-back outings, he has shown improvement from where he was about a month ago. There were times where everyone was saying “what are you doing?” but overall I thought mad the right plays at the right time and made better decisions than he had previously been making. He almost reached double figures in scoring and tallied only one turnover in 16 minutes of action. If he can keep that up, that will be a huge bonus for Louisville moving forward into the postseason.. PG. Louisville Cardinals. DARIUS PERRY. Grade
SF. Louisville Cardinals. V.J. KING. D. VJ only played two minutes and was able to secure one rebound.
In conclusion there are some positives and negatives with this game just as there is in any game. There were times where the Cards could have given the game away, especially towards the end, but didn’t. On paper it doesn’t seem like a huge win especially shooting 35% from the field, but this win could be the first brick to fall out of that mental barrier in closing out games.
Next. Louisville basketball is one missing piece away from deep tournament run. dark
Many fans feel that once this team starts to figure out how to handle that ball pressure, the sky is the limit for this team. However the Cards will have to figure out something before heading into the big dance.