Louisville basketball: Offensive struggles affect team mentality in loss to BC
The slump continues for Louisville basketball after their worst loss of the year. Now, Louisville is limping into March after an awesome January.
Well, if you told anybody a month ago that this Louisville basketball team would lose to Boston College, they would’ve said that you are absolutely insane.
These last two months have been almost complete opposites.
On January 30th, Louisville was in the top 15, tied for 1st in the ACC, with arguably the best resume in the country. The Cardinals got their 6th win in a row, in a blowout win over Wake Forest.
Other than a quality win over Virginia Tech, and that first half against Duke, Louisville has looked like a completely different basketball team in the last month.
After several blown leads and gut wrenching losses, Card Nation looked on to some seemingly forgiving games for once. Louisville was going to have a chance to gain some confidence back and regain some momentum going into the post season with games against Boston College and Notre Dame remaining (Virginia is…well, Virginia).
Now that ‘chance to breathe’ is gone, and our Cards are going into Senior Night against a down Notre Dame team with a lot more pressure than expected.
Chris Mack: "It doesn't have anything to do with shots. Our mentality becomes soft over time. When things don't go our way both individually and collectively, we just let that affect us. We just do. It's sickening to watch."
— Jeff Greer (@jeffgreer) February 28, 2019
To start the game, Louisville came out flat and let Boston College get to a 22-14 lead. The team was playing hesitant, the offense had no flow and that impacted the way they played on defense. It’s something that has been plaguing this team. They’ve been second-guessing themselves on offense and playing hesitant defense, and typically a big run from the opposing team follows.
Chris Mack not holding back after worst loss of the season: "You signed up to play for an ACC school. You've got to have a little bit of swagger about you."
— Jody Demling (@jdemling) February 28, 2019
Louisville inability to attack the basket also became more alarming against BC.
However, there were two positive takeaways.
Steve Enoch looked a lot more confident, dropping 22 points and 6 rebounds. Steve also started converting on a good amount of his post moves. You could see it in his body language and the way he was rebounding the ball, Enoch is getting his confidence back and was feeling it last night for a while. Which was good to see.
Another positive takeaway was VJ King playing significant minutes again and contributing. VJ played great defense and looked like he took some steps in finding somewhat of a groove on offense.
Nonetheless, there’s no way to spin this one. We all know that this team is so much better than this, we’ve seen it. I’m sure the team is just as upset as the fans are. The players have been talking about how this has been unacceptable, which is a good thing to hear.
But, until Louisville starts handling ball pressure, hitting shots, attacking the basket, and playing tough on defense, things aren’t gonna get better.
Next. Louisville basketball: Fear not, backcourt help is coming in 2019-20. dark
The Notre Dame game is without question a must win. We’re gonna see if these guys are gonna roll over, or respond. Because the time is now. This Notre Dame team is very beatable, so hopefully these guys come out focused and determined, and play tough and together for the entire game, and hold the lead. We know these guys can be one of the best teams in the country, this team can still bounce back and win some games in March. Let’s go support these seniors on Sunday.