Louisville basketball: What we learned about Cards in loss to Kentucky

Louisville has to be better at the free-throw line.

One of the biggest storylines coming out of the game was the Cards’ ineffectiveness at the charity stripe. Heading into the game, Louisville was shooting around 74.7 percent as a team from the free-throw line. That was good enough to rank as the 54th best rate amongst all Division I programs. But statistics seem like they don’t matter when they play against Kentucky. Louisville missed 11 free throws in the game, and we would possibly be talking about a win if they connect on half of those.

Free throws were probably the difference in this one, and that really hurts because they are supposed to be one of the easier things to do on the court. On the other side of things, Kentucky put together a quality performance from the free-throw line. They drained 21 of their 25 attempts from the charity stripe, and that should really tell you the difference here. Championship caliber teams convert on their free-throws and the Cards need to get more consistent in that area. The positive is that the Cards may not shoot this poorly from the charity stripe again this season, because they are clearly a better free-throw shooting team than these numbers indicate.