Taking a closer look at Louisville basketball’s interest in Kira Lewis Jr.

Louisville basketball reportedly has expressed interest in a dynamic guard who recently transferred. Could a new point guard for 2019-20 be in the Cards for Chris Mack?

Now that the Louisville basketball season has officially come to a close, Chris Mack and his staff have already begun looking forward to the 2019-20 season as well as the roster.

With three graduate transfers saying goodbye, and six freshman coming into the program currently Mack has no available scholarships to add a player to the roster for 2019-20. However, that hasn’t stopped him from reaching out to a extremely valuable transfer point guard.

Kira Lewis Jr. recently announced that he would be transferring from Alabama, where he played his freshman season under Avery Johnson, who was recently let go. Within 24 hours Lewis had been contacted by just about every single major program across the country including Duke, Indiana, Arizona, Miami, and of school that might raise some eyebrows around these parts, Louisville.

At only 17 years, Lewis Jr. was originally supposed to be a member of the 2019 class but reclassified and enrolled at Alabama ahead of schedule to play this past season. Averaging 13.5 points, 2.9 assists, and 2.6 rebounds per game, including five 20 points game it’s obvious to see why some of the upper echelon basketball programs are after the most talented transfer on the market thus far.

It’s worth nothing that there’s been no indication of how serious Louisville’s interest has been at thus point, especially considering the fact that they have no available scholarships to use on Lewis Jr. at this time.

Louisville reaching out could signal one of two things. One, Chris Mack knows someone is either transferring or going pro and a scholarship is opening. Who could that be? The most likely answer to that question right now is either Jordan Nwora (declaring for the draft) or Darius Perry (transferring).

The other option and honestly the more likely is that Mack is just getting his foot in the door with Lewis Jr. letting the dynamic, playmaking guard know that they are interested in the event a scholarship became available in the coming weeks. We have no idea how quickly Lewis Jr. will move, seeing as how most schools semesters haven’t ended just yet, and enrollment wouldn’t happen until summer school.

What we do know courtesy of Evan Daniels is that Lewis Jr. will be meeting/or have already met with Nevada, Baylor, and Memphis, all who have needs at point guard.

For Louisville, if a scholarship were to become available Lewis Jr. would be the perfect solution at the point guard position moving forward. While Lewis Jr., technically is considered a “sit-out” transfer at this point, we’ve seen the NCAA becoming more and more lenient with their waivers to play right away.

The biggest area of need for the Cards and Chris Mack heading into next season is undoubtedly at the point guard position. While they do have four star guards David Johnson and Josh Nickelberry coming in, one is likely not quite ready to be the starting guard on a potential top 25 team, while the other is better served playing off the ball and struggled when he was looked to be a primary point guard last summer.

Insert Lewis Jr., who started at point guard in all 34 games for Alabama and played at an extremely high level, both offensively and defensively all while being the youngest player in college basketball. At 6’3, 175 pounds, he fits the mold of taller, quick, athletic, playmaking guards who can play both on and off the ball.

With his experience, albeit on a fairly mediocre Alabama team, coupled with his high level talent (former top 50 recruit) and not to mention the fact that he has three years of eligibility remaining makes Lewis Jr. a great fit for the Cards.

A huge factor for Louisville’s pursuit of Kira Lewis Jr. will be first figuring out if they will have an open scholarship to use as well as doing their research into the probability of the NCAA granting the freshman guard a waiver to play right away.

Either way, the Alabama transfer would add a dynamic punch to the Cards back court should he decide to come to the Ville.