Louisville basketball secured another win last night as the Cardinals improved to 16-6 on the season and 6-4 in conference play. Louisville won on a team effort as the Cardinals only got three minutes from J’Vonne Hadley, as he sat out with back pain after he took a hard fall in practice earlier this week.
The Cardinals had five players score 10 or more points, including two bench players, Kasean Pryor and Khani Rooths, who combined for 22 points. A win in February, especially against a conference team, is especially important, but Louisville has a concern that must be fixed if they want to make a run.
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Louisville basketball has to find a solution to slow starts
The Cards have been prone to slow starts all season, as they have continued to struggle in the first few minutes of the first half. Last night, Louisville once again started slow as the Cardinals went down 10-2 in the first five minutes and didn’t hit double digits until the 12:14 minute mark.
“We will look at it and see if we need to change something up,” Kelsey stated after the Cardinals' win on Wednesday. “It’s been tough. We haven’t gotten off to good starts lately.”
Louisville went down 16-7 last night but was able to overcome the Cardinals' slow start against an 11-12 Notre Dame team. But against elite teams, the Cards can’t keep starting off slow. Louisville was able to overcome a slow start against SMU, going down 6-0 in the first minute and trailing 14-4 in the first five. Louisville ended up being down as much as 12 points in the first half and didn’t hit 10 points until the 12-minute mark in that matchup as well.
As for Duke, the Cardinals went down 17-9 in the first five minutes and showed it is hard to overcome a slow start, as they scrapped to keep it close in the first half but let it get away from them in the second half, losing by 31.
Against Virginia, the Cardinals went down 14-0, and didn’t hit that 10-point mark until under 10 minutes. Against Duke the first time, Louisville went down 9-3 in the first two minutes and trailed Tennessee 19-9 in the first 10 minutes of the game, and against Arkansas, Louisville trailed the Razorbacks by nine in the first 10 minutes as well.
So, this hasn't just been an issue recently, but has actually been a recurring theme. Kelsey shut down the idea of changing his starting lineup to try to get off to a quicker start, so something else must change. So, whether that is drawing up different plays to start, or attacking the paint to try and get an easy bucket to grow confidence. But something has to change as we inch closer to postseason basketball.
Louisville still has Clemson and North Carolina on their schedule and has big games against Miami and North Carolina State, which will have major seeding implications for the ACC standings.
Louisville needs to fix something in these first 10 minutes, as the Cardinals can’t rely on overcoming double-digit deficits against elite teams. While they were able to overcome deficits against SMU and Notre Dame, it is clear it is hard to do against ranked teams like Duke, Tennessee, and Arkansas.