It’s time for an “alpha” to step up for Louisville basketball

Louisville basketball has a ton of potential that remains untapped, but in order to break through their ceiling, they have to find an X-factor.

Over the course of the last month, Louisville basketball went from exciting to downright confusing,

If you are having a discussion about what teams could wind up in Atlanta to finish the season, it is not complete without including Chris Mack’s squad.

Louisville basketball has a wealth of talent, young, talented depth, a core of tested veterans, a solid coaching staff, and a preseason first-team All-American. At times in 2019-20, the Cardinals have looked like the real deal. They surged to No. 1 in the AP polls by week five, defeated a top 5 team in Michigan, and have shown flashes of brilliance on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.

You want to look at this Louisville team and think they are for real. On paper, they seem like a legitimate title contender, and they certainly pass the eye test as a balanced team. They shoot the ball at a solid clip, demonstrate excellent spacial awareness and can score on set pieces or in isolation, and they are a top tier defensive team.

However, there’s just something missing when you look at this Louisville squad, and if you are a Cards fan that should be quite troubling nearly midway through the season.

Over the weekend, we discussed how Louisville still has plenty of time to figure things out, however, what exactly it is that they need to figure out remains unclear.

Louisville, on one hand, seems so skilled in so many facets of the game, yet, at the same time, they seem to be missing those strengths when they need them the most.

The Cardinals have a tendency to get out to big leads and then throw on the cruise control. Often times, Louisville will blow a big lead or allow an opponent to make a run to surge ahead, and it isn’t until then that they seem to wake up to what’s going on around them and make a run at it. It is equal parts fascinating and frustrating.

Over Louisville’s last five games- a stretch that I have felt has presented a Louisville team still searching for its identity, I have found one common denominator:

Louisville has no one to go to when Jordan Nwora is not performing at his best.

When opponents make their runs against Louisville, it is almost always when Nwora doesn’t have the ball in his hands or his shots aren’t falling.

Nwora does a ton for the Cardinals aside from scoring. He is the team’s leading rebounder. He crashes the glass on both ends with a sense of purpose, and he has a great nose for the ball. Often times you’ll see a player like Nwora soar into a crowd to grab a rebound with good intentions but poor awareness. Nwora is both athletic and long enough to avoid getting into foul trouble while being aggressive on the boards.

Additionally, Nwora serves as an offensive decoy. Against Kentucky, the Wildcats were shadowing and face guarding him the entire game. No easy put-backs. No time to relax. Nwora’s purpose on the floor was to take at least one man away from the ball at all times.

Nwora can score, also, in a variety of ways. Though Ryan McMahon is likely the best spot-up three-point shooter in the country, Nwora is probably the best shooter from behind the arc and does so in every way imaginable. He is creative in the lane, crafty at the rim, has a floater, a step-back, a mid-range jumper, and everything in between. Nwora is one of the best pure scorers in school history.

But what is concerning for the Cardinals now is what happens when Nwora is taken out of the game. When a team game plans to never let the ball get into his hands with a clean look, when he has to leave due to foul trouble, or simply to grab some rest on the bench, the Louisville offense becomes stale.

Not always, but oftentimes, when the Louisville offense is flat, the defense gets a step behind. One thing leads to the next, and a close lead against Florida State turns into a wide margin of victory for the Seminoles or a 20-point lead against Miami widdles away to five points before you know it.

All of that has a ton to do with a lack of accountability on Louisville’s part as a whole. When one thing goes wrong, it is often a domino effect. Louisville often starts and finishes games strong, but it’s the soft 10-15 minute stretches in the middle that need to tighten up.

Following Saturday’s loss, Chris Mack told the media,

"“We have to be more resilient when things aren’t going our way and that’s been an issue for two years, and it needs to get corrected. If this team wants to have a better outcome than last year’s team, then they will correct it.”"

That all starts with a second player stepping up and being the guy for the Cardinals. Steven Enoch has shown flashes of being that guy as has Dwayne Sutton – but neither has consistently given UofL a second “killer” in crunch time.

Louisville has had its fair share of alphas over the last decade. Peyton Siva, Montrezl Harrell, Russ Smith, and Gorgui Dieng come to mind immediately.

You can have as many Kyle Kuric’s as you want on your team, but if you don’t have a Donovan Mitchell to balance it out, the chemistry simply doesn’t work.

Right now, Louisville is searching for a second guy to step up and consistently be the team’s top dog. This player doesn’t have to lead the team in scoring or dominate the glass, but he has to be someone who can be relied upon to get a couple of buckets when most needed. He has to be able to be a vocal leader, to rally the troops when the going gets tough, and to help his teammates look past mistakes and towards the solution to the problem.

Jordan Nwora is not that, nor should he have to be. Nwora’s role on the team is big enough. There are very few instances this season where his impact was not felt heavily, and his scoring and overall play is the reason Louisville sits where it does now.

The Cardinals need one other player to step up and be that guy. If not, what appeared to be an extremely promising season could be in danger of finishing in pretty ordinary fashion.