Louisville basketball: 3 takeaways from the win against Western Kentucky
The Louisville basketball team pulled away from the Toppers late in the game for the victory
It felt like a battle of 2 vs. 5 all night as Western Kentucky attempted to fight off the Louisville basketball team on the back of Taveion Hollingsworth and Charles Bassey.
Unfortunately for them, basketball is still a team game and it takes more than two players to win.
Despite Bassey’s 13 points, 15 rebounds, and 5 blocks and Hollingsworth’s 19 points, the Toppers fell way short against the Cardinals on Tuesday night.
Louisville pulled away in the second half to win 75-54 in a game that felt controlled by the Cardinals for the majority of the final 20 minutes.
It was another slow start for the Cards as they trailed for most of the first half against WKU. Western Kentucky led by a score of 25-17 just over halfway through the first half before Louisville went on a 24-9 run to end it.
Louisville freshman Dre’ Davis led all scorers in the game with 21 points and played his best game of the season offensively.
The Cardinals made it look easy against one of the better mid major teams in the country. Even more impressive, the team was still down Sam Williamson as well as Josh Nickelberry, Charles Minlend, and Malik Williams.
It’s odd to think about the team not having four of their better players when they have been playing so well. Now 4-0, not many would have picked the team to have this kind of record with those four players completely out of the lineup had you asked in the preseason.
With all of this being said, let’s talk about a few takeaways from Louisville’s huge win against Western Kentucky.
Louisville made two players beat them
As great as Bassey and Hollingsworth are, two players cannot beat a basketball team as good as Louisville. That’s what we said in our preview of today’s matchup.
Those two players got their fair share of buckets and made plenty of impact as we mentioned from their stat lines.
However, no player on the rest of Western Kentucky’s team scored more than five points in this game. The Cardinals didn’t give Bassey or Hollingsworth any special treatment. They made those two alone beat them. And, predictably so, they could not.
Western Kentucky clearly was lacking a true point guard with good floor vision that could distribute the basketball. The Toppers only had seven assists as a team in this game.
Once Bassey or Hollingsworth went on strings of not having the ball in their hands whether on the bench or simply not playing through them, WKU fell apart and Louisville took complete command.
It was really just a smart game plan by Chris Mack who clearly saw some things that he liked outside of WKU’s power tandem.
Mack has been coaching his tail off this year and the players are responding with fantastic team basketball on both ends of the floor. Today, he made it a point that no other player other than the Toppers’ stars were going to beat the Cardinals today and it worked to perfection.