Louisville basketball: Three options for final 2020-21 scholarship

Chris Mack and the Louisville basketball staff have one scholarship remaining and there’s one solution for how it should be used.

There was a lot of optimism heading into the offseason for Louisville basketball, even considering how the 2019-20 season ended. After missing out on several of their targeted high school recruits during the 2020 recruiting cycle, Chris Mack and his staff were left with a few open scholarships to add experienced, talented players who could help the team in 2020-21.

Louisville quickly targeted and landed the player at the top of their board in Carlik Jones, a 6’1 guard out of Radford and reigning Big South Player of the Year, before turning their sight to San Francisco transfer, Charles Minlend.

The Cards added experience, versatility, scoring, rebounding, and the type of toughness that Mack has been looking for during his reign as head coach at Louisville to go along with the oozing potential that is the 2020-21 roster led by returnees Sam Williamson and David Johnson.

Despite all the worry about Mack not being able to get the players he wanted (which turned out to not even be true), the Cards identified, recruited, and closed the deal on multiple players who could help swing the pendulum in the Cards favor next year.

Now Mack and company will have one more scholarship left to fill, thanks to the departure of Darius Perry earlier this offseason, and there’s been a lot of talk about what should be done.

There are several different options when it comes to what the staff does with the scholarship, all of which are worth exploring.