Louisville basketball: One lock, one bold prediction for Cards vs. Minnesota

When Louisville basketball faces the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Thursday, the coach will be a familiar face, but the opposition will be a learning experience.

Louisville basketball faces a tough task when they go up against the Minnesota Golden Gophers in their opening round game of the 2019 NCAA tournament on Saturday.

The Cards will have their hands full against a familiar face in former assistant and son of Louisville’s former Hall of Fame head coach Richard Pitino.

This Pitino-coached team has a lot of similarities to what Louisville fans will remember from the past, but they’ve yet to build the depth and culture that Pitino Sr. was known so well for. Let’s look at a bold prediction, and a stone cold lock for the Cards vs. the Golden Gophs.

Bold Prediction: Minnesota will press

This seems like the least bold prediction to anyone who hasn’t seen the Golden Gophers play this year. However, the Gophs simply don’t have enough man power to keep the dogs on teams at all this season.

The traditional Pitino-style defense, which, yes, little Rick does run, requires a lot of depth, particularly at the guard position. Guys are up on you away from the basket in the half court set, and Pitino teams press the whole game, sometimes even off of misses.

That isn’t the case with this Minnesota team, who really only go 7-8 deep right now, and are likely to keep a shortened rotation throughout the tournament.

One thing that is different about the tournament though is that the commercial breaks are more prevalent, and they run much longer. This means that little Rick’s squad may have something up their sleeves. The NCAA tournament is do or die, and especially if the Gophers get down early, they may choose to change up their game plan.

Louisville has already shown that they hate being pressed, and will shy away from contact against more aggressive teams in the full-court press. Now they face a coach in Richard Pitino that would love nothing more than to put a little heat on his pops’s old team.

Lock: Louisville will out-shoot the opposition

This Minnesota team doesn’t have many stengths outside of rebounding, but they do have one glaring weakness: scoring.

The Golden Gophers take a lot of shots, but they don’t make any- particularly from the outside and at the free throw line. Meanwhile, Louisville loves to shoot the three ball, and they make it at a 34% rate. Minnesota is equally as poor at defending outside as Louisville is successful at shooting the three ball.

The Cards will take a lot of shots, and the Gophers will either have to adjust or more than likely be content with dying by the three.

Louisville also has the advantage down low, where the Gophers lack a real experienced stopper to counter Steven Enoch and Malik Williams. The way the Gophers choose to defend may dictate who gets more clock, but this seems like Enoch’s kind of game on offense.

The Gophers’s Daniel Oturu was a heralded Freshman coming into this season, and he has made solid contributions right away. However, bigs with solid post games have proven that they can be effective against this Minnesota defense if the opposition makes it a priority to feed it down low.

The key for Louisville’s bigs will be to force Oturu to defend on multiple occasions. If Oturu gets into foul trouble the Gophers are in a world of hurt with back-up Matz Stockman likely unavailable.

If Louisville lets the offense come to them, and takes what Minnesota gives them, they will easily out-shoot the Golden Gophers.