How Louisville basketball made “mucking it up” look beautiful

On Tuesday night, Louisville basketball had to win playing a completely different style than most expected. Why the Cardinals suffocating defense was the difference in a battle of offensively-minded teams.

The tension was palpable in the KFC Yum! Center on Tuesday night as Louisville basketball hosted a red-hot Michigan Wolverines squad.

A raucous whiteout crowd brought the energy but was forced to wait on pins and needles as Louisville struggled to find its form offensively. Thirteen minutes into the game the ineptitude of both offenses had reached near comedic proportions. It was 18-5 Louisville, but the Cards were missing most of their opportunities with the ball in their hands.

“It was a grinder of a game,” Louisville basketball coach Chris Mack told the media in the postgame. “I thought we were creating some really good looks. It’s hard, (Michigan center Jon) Teske sits in the middle of the lane and he never moves. I thought we got some looks that, quite honestly, we take.”

Louisville was off from everywhere. The Cards missed floaters and lay-ups, began cold from deep, and only hit three of their first eight free-throw attempts.

But the Cards were ready defensively, and that was the story of the game.

“I think the story of the game was our defensive effort all the way through, Mack said. “We probably played 38 and a half (minutes) of as good of defense as we could play.”

Fans remained cautiously optimistic throughout. As time wore on, there was almost more of an eerie feeling that Michigan would turn things on and the Cards wouldn’t be able to stop them. However, a run to cut the lead from 10 at halftime to four was the closest Michigan ever got.

Louisville tightened up on defense and pushed the lead back out to 14 with a 10-0 run that spanned nearly four minutes.

Just how dynamic were the Cards on defense?

To start, Louisville became just the third team ever to hold a top-five team under 45 points. Given the circumstances of the game and the nature of two quick, athletic, offensively gifted teams, that is a hell of an accomplishment.

Entering the match-up, Michigan was 15th in the country averaging 82.4 points per game, even after facing two top 10 opponents. As of Wednesday morning, they rank 50th at 77.5 points per game.

The Cards held the wolverines to .672 points per play after the wolverines averaged well over a point per play coming in.

Most importantly of all, Louisville proved that regardless of the style of play, they can match the speed and intensity of the game and win in a number of ways.

Perhaps the biggest reservation from anyone who has watched Louisville basketball since Chris Mack’s arrival has come because of the Cards’ lack of defensive intensity.

In 2018, Louisville showed the propensity to get hot on offense but allow the opponent to play with them. Stars Steven Enoch and Jordan Nwora were two of the biggest culprits of looking lost on defense, and Nwora and Darius Perry were often relegated to the bench during critical defensive moments.

That bled over to the 2019 season just a bit. Louisville has shown a willingness to be stout on the defensive end but won its first stretch of games because of solid ball movement, hot shooting, and superior athleticism.

When presented with match-ups against teams equally as athletic against Western Kentucky and Michigan, the Louisville offense went cold at times.

That’s why it’s so encouraging to see Louisville 100 percent bought into Mack’s pack-line defensive principals.

On Tuesday, Louisville had one of it’s best defensive performances of the last decade- and that’s saying something given who Mack’s predecessor was.

If the Cards were hitting open looks, this could have been a blowout of epic proportions. But they weren’t; And instead, Louisville had to buckle down and prove that it was a team with a championship pedigree.

Throughout the first half, Louisville made sure that guards Zavier Simpson, Eli Brooks, and even Isaiah Livers weren’t able to penetrate or get easy shots, something they did almost perfectly. Louisville’s defense forced Michigan into bad jumper after bad jumper and when they did get into the paint, multiple defenders were there to contest close shots to which Michigan missed a ton.

In fact, in the first half Michigan went 6-30 shooting from the field while Louisville was able to keep the dangerous Simpson away from the rim and most importantly away from his teammates, keeping him to ZERO assists in the first half. Switching, high-hedging, rotating, and closing out had all proven to be challenging for Louisville (at times) through the first seven games of the season, which is why Chris Mack continued to point out his team’s inefficiencies and willingness to buckle down.

There were no issues with that on Tuesday night against the fourth-best team in the country. None. At. All. You can chalk it up to Michigan being tired if you’d like, that’s certainly what ESPN did. But to me, it came down to being locked in and focused for 40 minutes rather than who the opponent was and what they were dealing with.

Even as the Cards shot didn’t fall, they kept defending. Guys like Ryan McMahon, Steven Enoch, and even Jordan Nwora to an extent played some of the best defense of not only the season but of their careers.

Louisville earned its No. 1 ranking based on its offensive prowess thus far against lesser competition. But this game told a story of a more complete team. Michigan finished shooting 15-58 from the field (25.9 percent) while going 3-19 from three (15.8 percent) and only one player finished the night in double figures. Michigan’s starters, aside from Simpson and Teske, combined to go 3-21, scoring just 10 points combined.

The Cards were able to “muck it up” by slowing the tempo, forcing Michigan out of its rhythm, and absolutely suffocating them on defense.

If Mack’s squad brings that sort of defensive tenacity going forward, they will be the toughest out in the country.