The Floyd Street Tribune: The staggering facts of Louisville's free fall

Inside: The imaginary ACC Super League is heating up, with a surprise team emerging as perhaps the worst in recent ACC history, according to this one random game simulator on the internet.

Thanks so much for sticking with me through a difficult season. Miss the previous newsletter? I talked about the big steps backward in losses to UNC and Pitt … and I don’t think Wednesday night’s game changed much of that thinking for me. For just $7 a month, paid subscribers receive each newsletter in full and have access to each newsletter via the main TFST page.

The University of Louisville men’s basketball team moved into the 300s in Ken Pomeroy’s national efficiency rankings after the loss to Boston College on Wednesday night.

Stare at that sentence. Read it again. Really take that in.

Louisville — 2012 Final Four, 2013 national champion, 2014 Sweet 16, 2015 Elite 8, 2017 2 seed, 2020 No. 1 in the country — is somehow 301st out of 363 teams in the KenPom rankings within 11 years of all that success. The Cards have fallen 210 spots since the season started and lost all nine of their ACC games by an average of 15 points. They are two spots away from being the lowest-ranked high-major team in KenPom’s rankings since Pomeroy started his website for the 2001-02 season. Only 2011-12 Utah, which ranked 302nd in its first year in the Pac-12, is worse.

What is happening this season at Louisville is historic in all the wrong ways. Yes, there is more season to play — 11 regular-season games and (at least) one ACC Tournament game — so there is time to salvage the (very important) KenPom ranking and horrifically lopsided record and bring this ship back from the brink. But when you wake up on Thursday, January 26, 2023, Louisville will rank in the 300s in KenPom in the first year under new coach Kenny Payne.

Good morning.