Louisville basketball: 3 takeaways from 2020-21 roster unveiling
By Jacob Lane
Louisville has size and length & that’s a problem for the ACC
6’11, 6’7, 6’8, 6’8, 6’5, 6’5, 6’4, 6’4, 6’10, 6’8.
Those are the listed heights of the 10 Louisville players on the roster who are 6’4 or taller, easily giving Chris Mack his biggest and longest team yet during his tenure as head coach.
As he told us during the podcast back in March, he thinks this team resembles what he was used to having during the time at Xavier which always were always built on size, athleticism, speed, and length.
Mack will have a plethora of versatile weapons at his disposal to throw at the ACC this season, albeit young, they have all the potential in the world to cause problems for opposing teams.
Over the last two years, Mack’s teams haven’t had quite the level of length and pure athleticism that we’ve seen him coach in years past but using his patented pack line defense and playing zone in spurts, he’s been able to make it work.
This year, Mack will have a near perfect lineup for his pack line defense which will be built on length and being able to shut opposing offenses down. That’s an area where Louisville has struggled, allowing for a variety of teams to get hot and score on them even then they shouldn’t.
Mack has talked about his team’s struggling on defense when they struggle on offense, and as we look ahead to the 2020-21 season I think we may be on the other side of that. This year, Mack will have a lot of guys who pride themselves on being shut down defenders on the floor and when you mix that with authentic energy and athleticism, it’s scary.
By no means has Louisville been a bad defensive team during Mack’s tenure, finishing inside the top 30 in KenPom’s adjusted defense rankings but this year I expect this group to elevate that to a new level.
Sure, there will be a lot of youth and as we’ve seen over each of the last two seasons the packline comes with a learning curve. Early in the season Louisville could struggle, but even still, it’s likely we’ll see a glimpse of a group that has the makings of being special.
Offensively, that size and length should also help them be able to score more efficiently – especially around the rim. We all saw how special the three point shooting was for Louisville thanks to Jordan Nwora and Ryan McMahon, two of the best shooters in program history, as they finished in the top 65 teams in points from three.
However, when it came to picking up the more traditional and unsexy two-pointers Louisville wasn’t great. In 2019 they finished 161st in points from 2 pointers and a lot of that was because they didn’t have anyone who could consistently beat their man off the dribble.
We saw flashes of it from budding star guard, David Johnson and occasionally Nwora, Darius Perry, and Fresh Kimble were able to make it happen. But more times than not, Louisville settled for three point shots.
This year Mack is going to rely on Sam Williamson, Johnson, and Carlik Jones to be guys who create off the dribble. Mack talked about Williamson and the potential he has for the season and what they are looking for out of him, saying:
“Sam’s potential as a scorer for us is through the roof. I think he’s shown that he can be a very good rebounder for us. He’s going to have to up his defense and he knows it. He’s more than capable and I think he grew as a freshman. We’re really looking forward to having Sam as a sophomore and I think he’s going to do some big things for our team.”
Having a bigger team without sacrificing talent and skill should mean that Louisville begins to add new wrinkles to their offense and defense that we haven’t seen yet under Coach Mack.