Louisville basketball: Cards offense shines in win over Youngstown St.

Louisville basketball powered past the Youngstown State Penguins in the second half en route to a 78-55 victory in their home opener. 

It took one half of basketball, but Louisville basketball finally was able to put away the game on Sunday afternoon at the KFC Yum! Center. In the first seven minutes of the first half, Louisville looked like they were well on their way to scoring 100 points. They led 24-8 and were not missing many shots. However, Youngstown State did not go down without a fight, closing the half on a 23-14 run to make it a 38-31 game.

Louisville returned in the second half to put the game away, but this certainly wasn’t the best showing from the Cards and Coach Mack acknowledged that in his postgame interview. He said that the Cards didn’t give much effort, and they didn’t match the intensity level of the Penguins. He said that he didn’t like how the Cardinals played in many areas today and he was extremely upset with the performance by his squad.

The good thing for Louisville is that these games are opportunities to find these areas of weakness and work on them in practice. Despite how roughly he believed they played, Mack’s team won 78-55, but he insisted that the score doesn’t matter in terms of talking about effort. Throughout the game, it was clear that Louisville was the more talented squad, as expected, but Youngstown State played with the level of intensity that the Cards did not.

Once again, forward Jordan Nwora led the Cardinals with 21 points on 62 percent shooting from the field. He only made one three-pointer on four attempts, but it was an efficient performance that Nwora will take any day of the week. Steven Enoch dominated all day long in this one, scoring 17 points, grabbing 14 rebounds, and swatting away 3 shots. Impressively enough, Enoch did all of this while not committing a single foul, which helped the short-handed Cardinals immensely as he avoided foul trouble.

Dwayne Sutton made an impact on the floor in many ways, as he usually does. He only managed to score 2 points and grab 3 rebounds, but he held the Penguins leading scorer Darius Quisenberry to a 3 for 13 performance. Ryan McMahon scored 16 points and made four three-pointers for the second straight game to open the season. The senior guard has started the regular season strong after a rough performance in the Bellarmine exhibition game.

Darius Perry also had an incredible performance and it’s easy to see why Chris Mack was raving about the progress he made during the offseason. The junior guard recorded a double-double, pouring in 10 points, dishing out 12 assists, and grabbing five rebounds. He only turned the ball over one time as well. Perry certainly looks like the most trustworthy option at the point guard position for Louisville through two games.

Off the bench, freshmen Samuell Williamson and Quinn Slazinski both had six points each. Fresh Kimble struggled from the field, going 0 for 6, but he did dish out 5 assists. Aidan Igiehon continues to look lost when he’s on the floor, and Chris Mack has to be begging for Malik Williams to be back.

Louisville held Youngstown State to a poor performance offensively, as Jerrod Calhoun’s team shot 31 percent from the field, 18 percent from beyond the arc, and 50 percent from the free-throw line. Those numbers won’t beat many Division I college basketball teams. The Penguins didn’t play a great brand of team basketball either, only dishing out 5 assists and turning it over 11 times. The Cards did a great job of avoiding turnovers, coughing it up a mere 6 times.

The Penguins outrebounded the Cards 46-38, as they had 19 offensive rebounds and these led to many second-chance opportunities. Louisville cannot afford to give up this many offensive rebounds and second-chance points and Coach Mack is going to hammer down on this during the practice.

There are obviously some things to improve upon for the Cards, but this team is 2-0 and they’re going to continue to get better with more time on the floor. One thing that’s guaranteed is that Coach Mack will put his team through some grueling practices this week. Next, the Cards are set to host the Indiana State Sycamores on Wednesday night at 8 pm at the Yum Center.