The Floyd Street Tribune mini-letter: A rivalry game unlike any other
Inside: A game without expectation for Louisville led to some bona fide positives ... and rehashed continuing frustrations about a variety of issues.
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The 55th meeting between Kentucky and Louisville was a potpourri that, well, sometimes felt like a poopourri. But mostly a potpourri.
Louisville started in a fashion that suggested this might be the most lopsided rivalry game since the 34-point Kentucky win in late 1986. In that moment, right at the 15-minute mark, I imagine I speak for many when I say I honestly expected that. Kentucky had every rebound, including the three offensive rebounds off its only three missed shots to that point, while Louisville looked lost on offense and undone by turnovers and confusion.
To Louisville’s credit, the game changed after that. The Cards spread Kentucky out, used Brandon Huntley-Hatfield’s floor-spacing movement to pull Oscar Tshiebwe away from the basket and started to find some offensive rhythm. The rebounding fights (slightly) evened out. The effort improved. U of L made it a competitive game past halftime.
The game slipped away in the later stages in the usual fashion for Louisville against another high-major opponent, and the usual culprits reared their ugly faces at all the wrong times during that stretch. But it didn’t feel like the lifeless destructions against Arkansas, Maryland, Miami or Texas Tech. It’s probably a little silly to say this, but … I saw improvement — incremental, yes, but still progress.
A few quick points and then we should all get offline and enjoy New Year’s Eve.
(1) As Jay Wright pointed out, the Louisville lineups with a stretch forward and Huntley-Hatfield at center looked the best to me. I don’t know if the plus-minus numbers bear that out and I haven’t had the chance to look, but Louisville looked completely different with the El Ellis-Mike James-Kamari Lands-JJ Traynor-BHH rotation. They forced turnovers, moved the defense and converted some nice possessions.
Now, doing that over 40 minutes is hard and very different from doing it over 10-15 minutes of game time. But it’s something Kenny Payne should strongly consider using a lot going forward. He has used three variations of that rotation 20% of the time over the past five games, per Ken Pomeroy, but I’d like to see even more.
(2) Who is coaching interior fundamentals? Louisville really, really struggles with boxing out and defending the post despite having 37 big guys on the roster. And it’s not just a Tshiebwe thing, though he is obviously a monster. Louisville’s bigs don’t win positioning fights. They often give up a prime post-up spot to opposing frontcourt players, which leads to easy baskets.
But what frustrates me, you and 19 billion other people has to be the offensive rebounds. How do you give up an offensive board on a missed free throw? That is an effort and a technique thing — effort can be coaxed out of people, but technique has to be taught or re-taught.
Louisville has a coach once deemed the Big Man Whisperer at Kentucky whose associate head coach is one of the best big guys to ever play the college game. Cards fans have to hope whichever big guys come to Louisville after this season will reap the benefits of that knowledge and understanding, because it’s increasingly clear this group isn’t.
(3) A parting thought: Louisville did a lot well on Saturday. I really mean that — the Cards shot 47% from the field, drew a bunch of fouls that led to free throws, scored 12 second-chance points, got 12 dunks and layups and scored a solid 34 points in the paint against the best big man and one of the tallest teams in the country.
But turnover problems and defensive rebounding issues will relentlessly put teams in losing situations. You can’t have 25% fewer opportunities to shoot the ball. Going smaller puts better passers on the floor. If Louisville can consistently play at a 17% turnover rate vs. 25%, that might not seem like a ton, but in terms of a 70-possession game, that’s five more shots the Cards can get up in a game. Who knows how those could impact the outcome?
And the same goes on the other end: Opponents grab so many of their misses — 30.2% — that Louisville just handicaps itself. You expend all that energy to get a missed shot, but three out of 10 times, your opponent gets the rebound. That’s just not acceptable with the size and experience on the front line — or with the coaching credibility available to this team’s big guys.
You Hear That?
You can listen to Floyd Street’s Finest episodes on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This week’s episode featured a conversation with Mike Rutherford and has lots of relevant stuff in it despite the UK rivalry game theme.
Thanks so much for reading! Happy new year!
KP seems like a good man, and he’s a former player, so I say this with all of that in consideration, but there needs to be a plan in place to end this peacefully at the end of the season. He’s over his head, and I hate it for him, but the booster who forced him into this spot should write him a nice check and let this all mercifully end.
The lineups with Withers and Traynor both spotting up have been terrific. Just Traynor and BHH usually run into issues with poor rebounding and interior D, but agree that using whatever spacing is possible is a key.