Louisville basketball: Three biggest wins of 2019-20 season
By Alex Stengel
No. 3 – December 3, 2020 – Louisville takes down the hottest team in the country
No.4 Michigan: 43
No. 1 Louisville: 58
Even with Michigan losing a ton of talent from the 2018-19 season, the December matchup with Louisville was one of the most anticipated games of the non-conference schedule for the Cards. Leading up to the season no one was quite sure what to make of a talented Michigan squad transitioning from longtime head coach John Beilein to former Fab Five member, Juwan Howard.
As it turned out, Michigan would enter the ACC/Big Ten Challenge matchup coming off of one of the most dominant stretches of play at that point in the season, ripping off wins Iowa State, no. 6 North Carolina (prior to knowing they daggum’ sucked), and no. 8 Gonzaga over a three-day stretch as they took home the Atlantis Tournament trophy. There was actually debate at the time as to who should be ranked no. 1 in the country after Kentucky’s loss to Evansville. Many thought Louisville should the choice considering their hot start to the season, while others thought because of their stretch in the Bahamas, Michigan had deserved the spot.
No. 1 vs. No. 4 was the matchup, and while it was a bit of a scoring clunker finishing 58-43, Louisville picked up what we all thought at the time would be one of their biggest victories of the season.
The MVP of the game without question was Jordan Nwora, who finished with 22 points and 12 rebounds, doing so on a rather off night shooting. Much like what we saw against Virginia Tech later on in the season, Nwora was aggressively attacking the basket and the mid-range, an area of strength defensively for Michigan, while not settling for deep, contested threes (he went 1-5 from deep).
Against all odds, Louisville got possibly the best defensive performance over the span of his entire career from Ryan McMahon. Known for his shooting, McMahon has never been a player called on for because of his defense. In fact, Louisville has had to hide him defensively over the years and play other guards when going against bigger, more athletic guards. Going up against Eli Brooks, McMahon shined defensively limiting him to a 0-6 shooting performance and just two points.
But it wasn’t just Ryan’s stellar lockdown of Brooks, the entire Louisville squad constricted the Wolverines for all 40 minutes as Michigan shot a season-low 25.9% overall, and a cringe-worthy 15.8% from three. Numbers that were totally unexpected from the same Michigan team who just beat multiple ranked teams with their on-fire shooting, going 54% overall and 52.2% from three against Gonzaga just a game prior to the Cards.
This also served as a huge confidence boost for the team and fans alike, who were convinced up to this point that in order for Louisville to win their ‘signature’ big games, it’d have to be done through offensive fire-power, not a defensive stranglehold channeling their inner Virginia.
Proving to themselves they can win games in different fashions was significant, as we all know Louisville’s hot shooting cools off quickly at times. I remember watching the Cards come alive on defense leading to weird thoughts like “maybe I finally understand how UVA fans happily watch their team”, but I blame the Bourbon. Definitely the Bourbon.