Louisville basketball is in the middle of a crucial stretch right now, as the Cardinals recently lost to North Carolina and need to quickly get their minds right before they are back on the road and face Clemson this Saturday. The Cards have lost two of their last three, and all of a sudden, that five-game win streak has vanished, and the Cardinals fans are once again wondering just how far this team can go in the postseason.
The Cards had the sixth-highest National Title odds entering the season, and with Louisville sitting at 20-8, it is safe to say the season hasn’t gone according to plan. A big reason this team isn’t in the Final Four conversation at the moment is their 0-6 record against ranked teams.
The Cardinals have struggled immensely in quad 1A games, and a big reason is their supporting staff. Mikel Brown Jr. and Ryan Conwell can only do so much, but someone who fans thought would have a much bigger impact this season is the Virginia transfer Isaac McKneely.
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Isaac McKneely continues to struggle against ranked teams before March
The Virginia transfer entered the Transfer Portal as a unanimous 4-star and was ranked as high as No. 20 in the Transfer Portal and the No. 3-ranked shooting guard. McKneely was one of the best pure shooters in college basketball the past two seasons with the Cavaliers, and when he announced he was going to play for Pat Kelsey, Louisville fans expected a bit more from the sharpshooter.
Last season, McKneely averaged 14.4 points while shooting 43.9 percent from the field and 42.1 percent from downtown. The sharpshooter splashed 101 3’s last season, and he splashed 233 in his three seasons at Virginia, where his worst season was his freshman season, where he averaged just 6.7 points while shooting 39.2 percent from the field.
Well, with just three games remaining, McKneely has splashed 74 3-pointers, and is averaging just 10.6 points per game and shooting 41.6 percent from the field and 39.2 percent from the 3-point line, meaning he is averaging the fewest amount of points and shooting his worst splits from the field and downtown since his freshman season.
And when looking deeper, the sharpshooter is having a hard time against ranked opponents. In Louisville’s eight games against ranked teams, McKneely is averaging 9.3 points per game while shooting 34.3 percent from the field and 31.6 percent from downtown.
The Virginia transfer has had a theme of struggling against ranked teams this year, and that was clear on Monday when he went 0-5 from the field with all shots coming from beyond the arc. He is a one-dimensional scorer, and these long and athletic teams are taking him out of the game, and he is almost disappearing on the floor.
If Louisville wants to go on a run in March, McKneely has to be that sharpshooter he was for Virginia when he was nearly averaging 15 points per game and was shooting above 40 percent from downtown. A big reason he is struggling might be that he is playing a different position at small forward. A change Kelsey might want to rethink is moving him to the bench, starting Khani Rooths at power forward, and moving J’Vonne Hadley to small forward.
McKneely is a phenomenal shooter, but against these elite teams, he continues to struggle to find his rhythm. In the last five games, McKneely is averaging just 6.0 points while shooting 34 percent from the floor and 35 percent from downtown. With the postseason just a couple of weeks away, Kelsey has to find a way to get that 2024 and 2025 star out of his sharpshooter, as Louisville will need him in March if they want to make any noise.
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