Louisville basketball: Bold predictions for the season finale vs. Virginia

A Charlottesville Charade

Presley Meyer: Virginia scores below season average against Cards

The Cavaliers have won seven straight and propelled themselves into a chance to win a share of the ACC regular-season title on Saturday.

But a common theme since their last loss, an 80-73 game at Louisville, has been their regression back to a stale looking offense that limits possessions and mentally wears on opponents.

In 5 of their 7 straight wins, the Cavs have scored less than 60 points, and they have averaged just 51 points per game over the last three.

Although I don’t see Louisville putting up 80 points against UVA as they did in their meeting on February 8th, I definitely don’t see the Cavaliers coming anywhere close to 73. Or 63. And, perhaps, not even 53.

Virginia averages 57 points per game on the season, and I think they fall short of that mark in this one.

Here’s a crazy stat: UVA big man Jay Huff was the only player to score for the first 14 minutes of Virginia’s nauseating 46-44 win over Miami on Wednesday. The Wahoos led 17-15.

UVA’s offense is anxiety-inducingly slow and insanely inefficient. The Cavaliers’ only hope of winning is to limit their number of possessions and continue to force the ball to the hot hand.

In the case of their last game at Louisville, Tomas Woldentensae was en fuego from deep. He and sophomore guard Kehei Clark had their two best offensive outputs of the season by far.

No such thing is going to happen on Saturday.

If you are plotting Virginia’s offensive performances this season, its efficiency against the Cardinals is a ridiculous outlier. What appears to be the norm for the Cavs is how they have been winning since. Bleed out the clock, lull the opponent to sleep, and play insanely good defense.

Louisville, on the other hand, has seen an increased defensive intensity from upperclassmen Jordan Nwora and Ryan McMahon over the last few games. Overall, Louisville has one of the better defenses in the ACC. The Cardinals are ranked 30th in Adjusted Offensive Efficiency according to Ken Pomeroy, and they are only that far down the list because of an uncharacteristic shooting night from the Cavs- the nation’s 235th-ranked offense by the same metric- a month ago.

The bottom line is Louisville’s defense is pretty damn good in its own right, and Virginia’s offense is historically bad- as in last among all power five teams in offensive efficiency bad.

Louisville is probably going to be lacking in size down low due to the probable absences of junior captain Malik Williams and freshman reserve Aidan Igiehon. Even still, the Cardinals may ratchet up the intensity on the perimeter and try to turn some Virginia vulnerabilities into quick, easy scoring opportunities.

It won’t be easy- it never is against these guys- but if there’s a year where the Cards can flip the script and shut down the Hoos, this is it.