Louisville basketball: 3 bold predictions vs. Virginia
By Jacob Lane
Louisville will hold Virginia to under 30 percent from three
Three-point shooting is going to be a key throughout the entirety of this piece as its something that Louisville has done really well this season and something Virginia has been fairly bad at.
It’s hard to continue scoring at the level many expect you to when you lose three-star players to the NBA like Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy, and De’Andre Hunter. Louisville fans are probably more familiar with those players than anyone else, as they’ve combined to be thorns in the side of the Cardinals over the last three to four years, not dropping a single game during their time as players against them.
Now with them all gone from Charlottesville, the replacements haven’t been able to play anywhere near the same level of production and it explains the trouble Virginia has had this season with winning games.
Tony Bennett’s team currently sits as the 345th best three-point shooting team in the country (out of 350 schools) shooting 27.6 percent from deep. While most knew Virginia would take a big step back, no one expected them to shoot as poor as they have this season.
Players who have been labeled as “shooters” haven’t done anything close to that this season as Jay Huff (30.8 percent), Kihei Clark (22.2 percent), Casey Morsell (14.8 percent), and Kody Stattmann (21.7 percent) have all shot under the 30 percent mark.
Louisville will likely make shutting down the interior a priority defensively against Virginia (which we’ll get to in a second) which means that they’ll allow those guys along with Tomas Woldetensae and Braxton Key to take three-point shots as long as they aren’t wide open.
Look for trapping inside to force turnovers, something Virginia has been very bad at this season, which should lead to the ball being passed out around the key and more three-point shots. If Louisville’s defense plays like we saw on Wednesday, meaning aggressively closing out with hands up on shooters and being active inside, look for Virginia to continue their bad shooting and the Cards to take advantage.