Louisville basketball: 3 keys to beating North Carolina

Louisville basketball faces a red hot North Carolina squad in their second game of the ACC tournament. What do the Cards need to do to pull another upset?

Louisville basketball has found themselves in the quarterfinals of the ACC tournament after getting a much needed blowout victory over Notre Dame, and awaiting them is a rubber match game with the North Carolina Tarheels.

Louisville absolutely rumbusticated UNC in their first meeting in Chapel Hill- an 83-62 shellacking that is Roy Williams’s worst home defeat as the Carolina coach.

Since that game though, North Carolina has been on an absolute tear, going 14-1 over their last 15- including a solid beatdown of the very same Louisville team in the KFC Yum! Center two weeks later.

In this deciding tilt, Louisville will have to somehow re-create the energy from that first victory in order to come away with a victory. Here’s how:

Win the battle down low

The main difference between game one and game two for the Cards? The low post play. Louisville got 15 less points and 5 less rebounds from it’s dynamic tandem of Steven Enoch and Malik Williams as UNC landed their return blow.

More than that though, Louisville’s bigs looked like they were on a different planet on defense in game two. It’s hard to tell if UNC was more well-prepared the second time around, or if it was more about the Cards’s inability to adjust in game. Whatever the case, Louisville has to get all five players on defense on the same page.

North Carolina did a tremendous job of getting it’s best players- Luke Maye, Coby White, and Cam Johnson- isolated and taking advantage of mismatches. Additionally, after a very poor game one, Luke Maye just bullied Malik Williams down low on multiple occasions.

Louisville has to find a way to prevent mismatches on the defensive end, and give their big men opportunities to score consistently down low.

Improve rebounding

A glaring statistic that stands out going from the first matchup to the second is rebounding. In Louisville’s game one win, they outrebounded UNC 40-31, and snagged 10 offensive boards. However, in the rematch, it was North Carolina who owned the boards, outrebounding the Cards 49-32.

Chris Mack wasn’t happy after his team’s performance in the second game, and talked in-depth about rebounding in his post-game presser, saying:

"“Well, I’ve always been a big believer that when the shot goes up you block out the person that you’ve been guarding for the possession. I’ve tried to instill that into our team, and it’s ebbed and flowed. We’ve had some games against really good offensive rebounding teams that we took away the component of that game. We’ve had nights like tonight. We’ve had nights like NC State, Michigan State, where their will and our concentration level and toughness level, our remembrance of blocking out, was absent. That falls on me. Because if I haven’t conditioned our guys when the shot goes up to find their matchup and block out, then I haven’t done my job. I’m playing the wrong guys.”"

Louisville has to win the battle on the glass for this game to even be close. North Carolina is not an incredible shooting team, and they aren’t a lockdown defensive team. They do what Roy Williams teams have always done well: rebound the ball like crazy, create second chance points, and score quickly in transition.

North Carolina could destroy Louisville if they are able to effectively rebound and create second and third chance points. But if the Cards crash the boards and limit possessions, anything is possible.

What we’ve seen from Louisville over the last four games should give fans faith that rebounding has not only been a huge point of emphasis from Chris Mack and staff in practice, but has been an area of strength for the Cards. Against BC, Notre Dame (2x), and UVA the Cards have won the rebounding margin in every game (though they are just 2-2 in the games themselves) and have had an overall rebounding margin of 195 to 137.

To win tonight Louisville has to stick in that 45-53 rebounding range, something that is possible

Shoot the ball effectively

It goes without saying, but Louisville is a good shooting team, and they will have to shoot good to great to survive and advance in the ACC and NCAA tournaments.

It is no coincidence that with Louisville’s recent slump, their shooting numbers have also fallen. However, the Cards have turned their shooting woes around in the month of March, and they even posted one of their best offensive outputs of the season in the regular season finale against Virginia.

Louisville will have to continue moving the ball until they get open shots, and keep making open shots and not fall into the trap of playing one on one isolation ball in transition. Much like in their win against Notre Dame, Jordan Nwora will need to lead the team in scoring in order for the Cards to win and will need to do in an effective manner, not just settling for three’s because they are there. UofL will also need efficient scoring from Christen Cunningham, Dwayne Sutton, and even VJ King as well as strong inside games from Malik Williams and Steven Enoch.

If the are able to do that the Cards have a great shot of staying right with the Tar Heels and that’s really all you can ask for when you go head-to-head with arguably the hottest team in the country.

Can Louisville win? Yes, absolutely. They’ve showed throughout the season that no matter the opponent they can hang tight. But it will take moving past the ghosts that have haunted them in crunch time over the last month or so in order to move past North Carolina in the quarterfinals and have a shot against either Duke or Syracuse in the semifinals.

Go Cards!