Louisville basketball: Latest scares could be a positive moving forward

Louisville basketball defeated Akron on Sunday evening in the KFC Yum! Center, but another late-game collapse has many wondering if the issues from last season have been fixed. We examine why late game scares could be a good thing.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Louisville basketball built up a big lead throughout a game, only to see it evaporate in the waning moments of regulation.

The nightmare that was the end of the 2018-19 season reared its ugly head again on Sunday night when Louisville welcomed Akron to the KFC Yum! Center.

All offseason head coach Chris Mack hoped to help his team learn and move on from their struggles of closing out games down the stretch of last season, which was highlighted by a 23 point blown lead against Duke and Zion Williamson.

Mack said earlier this offseason that on multiple occasions he sat his team down to watch each and every second of their come back losses so that they could feel the way they felt last season ultimately crumbling and exiting the tournament in the first round by way of Minnesota.

Coming off of Wednesday night’s game that saw Louisville struggle to put away one of the nation’s bottom teams in South Carolina State, I thought there’d be no chance they’d let the Zips hang around.

Early in the game Louisville quickly took the lead, keeping the hot shooting alive. Ryan McMahon and Steve Enoch got the team going with a barrage of three-point shooting and highlight-worthy dunks and post moves inside.

It looked like a game that could be somewhat of a contest early in the first-half as Akron wasn’t shy on the offensive end. Guards Tyler Cheese (there were so many fantastic puns), Loren Cristian Jackson (who is just 5’8) and Channel Banks challenged Louisville’s guard’s defensive with their ability to penetrate and score from inside the paint on easy layups as well as knocking down tough shots. Banks was especially hot throughout the first half hitting three three’s on his way to a 15 point performance.

Then just like that, boom Jordan Nwora happened. Louisville’s leading scorer got hot, fast, scoring 12 straight points and helping to extend the lead to double digits. From there, Louisville would finish the half with a 47-31 advantage, just about putting the game away – or so we thought.

Akron just wouldn’t go away. Cheese, Jackson, and Banks continued to score in a variety of ways while turning up the defensive pressure. Very quickly the ghosts of year’s past returned to the Yum! Center and the lead began to slip away.

Postgame Chris Mack put why his team began to struggle in the second half, opening the door to Akron overcoming a 20-plus point lead. Mack said, we didn’t shoot well in the second half, and when the shots didn’t fall we felt bad for ourselves.”

With Nwora, McMahon, and even Enoch hitting their first true dry spells of the season, Akron took advantage. Even without senior Xeyrius Williams providing much of a scoring lift, Cheese and Cristian Jackson scored at a high enough level to chip the game down from 20 to 14 to 7 and eventually to as low as four points.

Ultimately, Louisville did just enough to pull out the victory which is all that matters. There were plenty of positives to be taken away from this game. In the first half, Louisville was feeling it. We saw a well-polished offense that got going as they fed the post. Enoch was active early and his teammates rewarded him for it, to which he took advantage of. Him being on led to passes going inside to outside, which got Ryan McMahon and Jordan Nwora open.

We also can’t fail to talk about the incredible performance of Dwayne Sutton, the most versatile player in college basketball (something he confirmed last night) as well as Louisville’s most important player this season.

After securing 15 boards and scoring nine points in the win over USC Upstate, Sutton once again dominated the glass totaling 14 boards to go along with 10 points giving him his double-double on the season. Chris Mack doesn’t hold back when it comes to Dwayne Sutton and the impact he has on the Louisville squad. Mack said of Sutton:

"“If every player on our team had the mindset of Dwayne Sutton we wouldn’t lose a game all year, that’s 100% true.”"

Even with the win, the late breakdown left plenty of questions to be answered by both Mack and his team after two straight games of allowing teams with inferior competition to stick around.

Kudos to Akron.

With four seniors (two redshirt seniors) and two juniors playing heavy minutes, they are a team very much capable of making the tournament with an automatic bid from the MAC. They did a great job of taking Nwora and Louisville’s scorers out of place in the second half and forcing shots that were rushed and out of the Cards’ normal offensive flow.

In the end, the win is all that matters and now Louisville will move on to the first tough stretch of games in the 2019-20 season. After facing only one power five team in Miami during the first three weeks of the season, Louisville will now go head-to-head with Western Kentucky (in Nashville), Michigan, Texas Tech (in New York City) and Pittsburgh in their second ACC clash.

While those games aren’t necessarily against the nation’s top talent, they are all very well-coached teams more than capable, and willing, to knock off Louisville. That’s why these tests that Louisville has faced over the last week are a good thing.

Sure, no one wants to struggle with a team like USC Upstate or even a tournament-caliber mid-major Akron team – but things happen. College basketball is unpredictable, we know that, which means that Louisville can’t afford to slip up.

They may be “bad looks” for Louisville in terms of their ranking and national perception but adversity this early in the season for a veteran-clad team can be beneficial in the long-run. It’s clear Louisville’s not played with the same mentality we saw early against Miami (before the late comeback), Indiana State, and NC Central and it’s affected the outcome of both games.

It’s no excuse but lesser competition can cause players to shift their mentality into neutral and go through the motions, especially when things get tougher. Akron forced Louisville into a corner, as did USC Upstate, and they responded by pulling out both wins in different ways.

Against USC Upstate we saw Louisville get hot to close out the game with a 20-plus point victory while Akron forced Mack’s club into hitting free throws and making smart decisions within the press in the closing seconds.

It’s simple if Louisville doesn’t bring their best every night, regardless of whether their shots or falling or not, the ranking won’t survive. And while in the short-term a ranking is irrelevant, long-term habits will be formed and the film will exist, meaning fixing late-game meltdowns has to start now.

With Malik Williams returning to the lineup, albeit rusty, and David Johnson looking like a player who could very well end up being the team’s starting point guard by season’s end, Louisville has more than enough depth and the resources necessary to square things away. Johnson provides Louisville another ball handler to break the press and keep the offense steady, while Williams provides offensive scoring, defensive rim protection, rebounding, and leadership.

While Mack continues to remind us that his team has a far way to go to earn their ranking, it’s not as far as he might let you on to believe But the next four games over the course of three weeks will confirm or dispell that.

About his team’s improvement, Mack said:

"“We need moments like the second half to find a little bit of reality of where our team is right now. I know everybody gets hung up on the rankings, but I’ll say it as the head coach here — we have not earned that yet, just like every team in the country, in my opinion, has not earned that yet, because the sands are shifting in terms of teams getting better.”"

Those moments have arrived, starting with Western Kentucky on Friday the day after Thanksgiving in Nashville.

Louisville has looked the part of the number two team in the country at times this season, but they’ve done so against mid-to-low major programs which is all you can ask for. They’ll prepare to face teams with NBA caliber players like WKU’s Charles Bassey, and teams who are battle-tested and have had a taste of success like Texas Tech. In fact, Louisville’s next four opponents hold a combined 20-3 record compared to the 12-20 record held by the Cards first five opponents.

If Louisville sleepwalks into any of the next four games it will be the difference in a win and a loss, despite their level of talent. Teams who are on the collision course with a national championship show up to play on a nightly basis, always playing with the mentality that they are better.

While Louisville has done the latter, almost to their own determinant, the former can begin to be defined by beating good basketball teams, something the Cards have the possibility and no doubt the ability to do.

The season is still young, but to get where they need to be Chris Mack wants to see his team grow from the mistakes vs. USC Upstate and Akron and learn by knocking off quality teams in unique situations.