Louisville basketball looking to rebound as they take on Eastern Kentucky

Keeping Eastern Kentucky at bay on offense

The Cards are undoubtedly capable of overpowering Eastern Kentucky with their defensive prowess, and that’s always a key to winning a college basketball game. If Jomaru Brown doesn’t lead the Colonels in scoring, I’m not sure who’s going to really step up and put together a quality scoring performance to keep them in the game. There’s always a chance that a team gets hot any given night, but this is one of the worst offensive teams in college hoops.

As a team, the Colonels are shooting 39.7 percent from the field and 31.6 percent from beyond the arc. Those numbers rank 321st and 240th in the country, respectively. The Cards need to take advantage of these offensive limitations and force them into chewing up a lot of the time on the shot clock before taking tough shots. Louisville also needs to be intense with their on-ball pressure as well as playing the passing lanes, and they can get easy buckets by turning defense into offense.

Holding onto the basketball

The one area that I found Eastern Kentucky to be extremely effective in is their ability to force their opponent into turning the ball over, and specifically getting steals. They average around 11 steals per game, and that is honestly an incredible number. Overall, they force around 21.8 turnovers per game, and that is a top-five mark in the entire country. This might not be a number that Cards fans are prepared to see.

Louisville is coming off their worst game of the season in terms of holding onto the basketball, as they coughed up the ball a season-high 18 times against Texas Tech. The team is going to need to clean up the sloppy passing and effort, and they can’t turn the ball over that much if they want to be seriously respected as a national title contender. The good news for the Cards? I have a slight feeling that Eastern Kentucky’s defense isn’t nearly as physical and talented as Texas Tech’s.

The offense needs to wake up

As the Cardinals offense got off to a hot start this season, it’s been extremely surprising to see their struggles from the offensive end extending this far. After starting the season with five games over the 50 percent mark, the Cards have not reached that mark since. In the last five games, Louisville has shot 40.6 percent from the field and 31.2 percent from three-point land. Those aren’t absolutely terrible numbers, but they’re not what Chris Mack wants his team to be at.

Coming off their worst offensive performance of the year, I think it’ll be interesting to see how Louisville performs against EKU. Opponents don’t shoot the lights out of the three-ball against the Colonels, only hitting about 28.9 percent of their attempts. Overall, Eastern Kentucky’s opponents have shot 43.2 percent from the field, ranking as the 220th best mark in the entire nation. The Cards are certainly hoping to raise these percentages with a quality offensive performance on Saturday and I firmly believe they will do so.

Predictions:

Tristan Beckmann: Louisville 86, Eastern Kentucky 65.

• Cards shoot over 50% as a team.
• Cards turn the ball over less than 9 times
• Dwayne Sutton returns to double-digit points.

Jacob Lane: Louisville 76, Eastern Kentucky 49

• Two freshmen score in double-digits
• Darius Perry plays less minutes than David Johnson, Ryan McMahon & Fresh Kimble
• Fresh Kimble finishes with 12-plus points