No. 13 Louisville basketball aims to end losing streak when it hosts Miami

Don’t let Miami get hot from beyond the arc

On paper, the Hurricanes are a really dangerous team when it comes to knocking down their three-pointers. After Florida State knocked down 11 of 23 deep balls on Saturday, Cards fans might not be exactly thrilled about hearing this. Miami is connecting on 37.9 percent of their three-point attempts, which ranks as the 30th best percentage in the country. They have three terrific three-point shooters in Chris Lykes, Kameron McGusty, and Dejan Vasiljevic. Those three were responsible for 8 of Miami’s 10 made threes in their first meeting with Louisville.

The Cards can not afford to give Miami’s shooters open looks on the perimeter, so their defensive gameplan has to be sound and they’ll need to rotate better than they have in recent games. Finding the shooters on the wing is a massive key if the Cards want to walk away with a victory in this one. If they struggle, a performance like the one that FSU has offensively may just wind up repeating itself.

Having a balanced offensive attack

At some point this season, Louisville was hoping for a main secondary scoring option to have arrived. It still hasn’t arrived as we reach the 15th game of the year. Jordan Nwora is a tremendous scorer, but Florida State showed Louisville that it can’t compete all the time even if Nwora has a career night. The Cards need other players to step up and contribute, and that’s something that this team was not expected to struggle with finding. It is great that Jordan Nwora can score like he did against the Noles, but Louisville will struggle mightily if their other ten players can only manage to score 33 points combined like they did on Saturday.

The Cards need consistency from guys like Steven Enoch, Dwayne Sutton, and Fresh Kimble. They’d also benefit from getting more production out of freshmen like Samuell Williamson and David Johnson. Ryan McMahon has also been really struggling in the last few games. A game against Miami could be just the thing that the Cards needed, as the Hurricanes rank outside the top 200 in terms of defense. Hopefully, the Cards can start finding a string of consistency and build a balanced offensive attack.

Predictions:

Tristan Beckmann: Louisville 86, Miami 68.

• Dwayne Sutton gets back into double-figures.
• 4 Cardinals score in double-figures.
• Cards hold Chris Lykes to under 15 points.