Grading Louisville basketball’s confounding loss to Texas Tech

No. 1 Louisville basketball has flaws exposed as they fall to unranked Texas Tech at Madison Square Garden.

Seeing Louisville basketball being ranked as the no. 1 team in the country felt great while it lasted. After winning their first two games ranked at the top of the Top 25, the third time wasn’t the charm as the Cards fell to unranked and defending runner-ups, Texas Tech.

The Cards traveled to New York City to play in the annual Jimmy V Classic, hoping to plant themselves firmly at the top of the rankings. Coming off of two impressive wins, one over no. 4 ranked Michigan a week ago, and Pittsburgh on Friday night, it looked like Louisville was set up to take down a struggling team who was missing their top player.

Louisville started the season on fire offensively, shooting the nation’s top three-point field goal percentage. Unfortunately, over the last three games, the opposite could be said. The Cards offense has struggled to create shots for anyone not named Jordan Nwora. That’s led to turnovers (lots of them), bad shots being hosted early in the shot clock, and at times lack of attention to detail defensively.

Against Michigan and Pittsburgh, Louisville did just enough offensively to put games away, allowing their “muck it up” pack-line defense to be the star. That worked up until Tuesday’s game with Texas Tech.

From the start, Tech did everything they could to take away Nwora. They used their defense to limit the number of touches that big men Steven Enoch and Malik Williams, which hampered the ability to take advantage of the size advantage and depth issues from T.J. Holyfield and Texas Tech.

Tech clearly had a game plan to force Louisville out further than usual when setting up their offense and it worked. Louisville turned the ball over left and right, continued to fire bad shots, and simply looked like a team whose flaws were too much to overcome. That led to bad effort on both sides of the ball (at times), bad body language, and quite frankly bad play.

Point guard flaws exposed

Flaws often times can be covered up in wins, but in a loss, things seem to hit the fan. That was the case over the last week as the point guard play for the Cards was less than desirable against Michigan and Pittsburgh in wins, and was even worse in the loss to Texas Tech.

Starter Darius Perry and reserve Fresh Kimble combined to play 38 minutes, going 2-9 from the field (0-2 from 3pt) for six points, one rebound, two assists and six turnovers.

The six turnovers all came by way of Perry as he struggled to get Louisville in any sort of set or offensive flow. His passes were mostly lazy, many of which were into the post trying to hit Jordan Nwora or Steven Enoch. Others came in transition while the most frustrating turnovers were on basic, easy plays.

Kudos has to be given to Chris Beard and his guys for playing great team defense. They did a nearly perfect job with switching on screens, denying ball entry into the post, and keeping the Cards from getting out in transition.

Over Louisville’s last three games, the three point guards have now combined for 25 points and 13 assists compared to 17 total turnovers. That’s not good. Darius Perry played just 15 minutes looking like a shell of the guard who dished out 12 assists just a few weeks ago. Kimble has yet to find his role, and David Johnson isn’t quite there.

So now what? Do you keep going with Darius Perry as your starter and playing Fresh Kimble off the bench? Or, do you go all-in on getting David Johnson? There was so much talk about him being the starter at some point this season (before and after his injury) and if you’re going to do it, now’s the time – right?

Maybe not. Maybe you trust your veterans. Despite their inefficiencies and struggles (which I pointed out above) they are upperclassmen who know what it takes to win. They’ve been there, done that, and they should be trusted to steer the ship back on course.

Shooting changes the dynamics

Louisville’s shooting has really a farce of what we saw through their first six or so games. While defenses have begun to pressure the ball more, which we all know typically leads to a higher number of turnovers, Louisville has also shot themselves in the foot with bad shot selection, early shots, and from other players not being able to get anything going aside from Nwora.

Tuesday was a great example of that. Louisville had quite possibly the worst offensive performance that I can remember in some time. They shot 18-53 from the field and 3-17 from deep, finishing the game at 34 percent and 17.6 percent.

Texas Tech face guarding and doubling Steven Enoch made things extremely difficult for Mack’s group throughout and it led to the high number of three’s and missed jumpers (and turnovers too). The majority of Louisville’s offensive woes can be blamed on their inability to handle the pressure and pack line principles of Tech, but a lot of it can be also placed on just not shooting well.

With Jordan Nwora, Ryan McMahon, Sam Williamson, and others there aren’t going to be many nights were they go 17 percent from deep. They just won’t. However, when they do they have to work harder for smarter shots, point blank period. Nwora and McMahon can’t always be asked to bail the team out of leads, which is exactly what happened Tuesday night.

Bad shooting changes everything for Louisville, still. The great news is, there’s time to figure it out.

Everything is okay

Read that last sentence again.

Did you?

Did you see the part that said: “there’s time to figure it out.”

Losing the number one ranking sucks, it really does, but it’s by no means the end of the world. Teams lose games in December all the time and go on to figure things out and make deep postseason runs.

Louisville had several flaws exposed by Texas Tech and all you can do is give kudos to them and trust that Coach Mack and his roster, highlighted by the likely ACC Player of the Year, will figure it out.

Kentucky is coming up, with two games in-between against inferior opponents, so there’s not a ton of time to sulk. I expect them to go back to work and get things back on track and head into conference play on a high note.

Game grades

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C

It’s going to happen at some point, but through 10 games Kimble hasn’t found his role yet. Between himself and Perry, there was no set offense or any sort of flow and bad shots went up left and right. His 4 points, 2 assists, and 2 steals were nice but everything else was blah.