Louisville basketball: 3 bold predictions vs. Georgia Tech

Louisville struggles again with Moses Wright & James Banks III

Louisville’s interior defense has been fairly inconsistent during their 10-game winning streak as they’ve allowed several players to have big performances.

Olivier Sarr’s 16-point performance for Wake Forest and John Mooney’s 15-point, 19 rebound double-double for Notre Dame come to mind quickly when thinking about games where Louisville’s interior defense was taken advantage of. But no game was more infuriating to watch from an inside defensive standpoint than the last match-up with Georgia Tech,

While Georgia Tech’s guards Jose Alvarado and Michael Devoe were the bigger stories, the production of Wright and Banks III was what pushed them out to such a big lead and kept them in right up until the end.

That night, Malik Williams and Steven Enoch both struggled to defend the paint, allowing Wright and Banks to essentially dominate as they pleased. The two bigs combined to give up 23 points and 10 rebounds, which doesn’t seem like a lot but really helped to stabilize the game for Tech.

Louisville’s bigs have been prone to sleep-walking like performances and even in what I believe will be a fairly lopsided win, will come with the caveat that the Cards were once again susceptible to giving up easy buckets and offensive rebounds.

The weak defensive performance, unfortunately, will come on the heals of Louisville dominating a very good Virginia frontcourt. Mack’s bigs limited the trio of Mamadi Diakite, Jay Huff, and Braxton Key to just 8/23 shooting from the field, giving up only 21 points and 11 rebounds – well below their season average as I detailed in my bold predictions piece for Virginia.