BOZICH | Which former player does Louisville miss most: Dre Davis or Noah Locke? | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- There is no pleasant way to discuss the way this University of Louisville basketball season has unfolded. It's several levels beyond head-scratching.

Maybe if the Wright State buzzer beater does not fall, the Cards win that game and have the resolve to beat Appalachian State, too.

OK, 2-7 would still be dismal. Agreed.

But it would be better than 0-9 and sitting with California as the only winless teams among the 363 Division I programs.

The Cards rank No. 237 in Ken Pomeroy's latest rankings, which is 110 spots below where U of L finished in 2022 after losing 15 of its last 18 games.

The road to awful gained momentum with the nonsense that developed over the final two months of last season. This has been a three-year race toward rock bottom.

Without overwhelming you with analytics, it is sufficient to tell you that Louisville ranks among the bottom 50 teams in America in turnover percentage, two-point field goal percentage, three-point field goal percentage and assists per field goals made.

That spells 0-9 — with 0-10 likely on the menu when Western Kentucky visits the KFC Yum! Center on Wednesday night.

But here is one other factor that should not be dismissed: According to Ken Pomeroy's analytics site, Louisville ranks 340th in experience — at 0.8 seasons of Division I experience per player.

It's a team that lacks talent and experience.

The Cards are clearly the least-experienced Power Six team in the nation. Oregon State is 336th at 0.93 seasons of experience. The Beavers are 4-6. Washington State is 303rd at 1.22 seasons of experience. The Cougars are 4-5.

The Cards are not good enough and they lack the experience and maturity to deal with the gaps in their games. Kenny Payne and his staff are searching for ways to figure it out. They have not found many.

What happened to Louisville's experience?

Louisville's experience is averaging 44.9 points, 21.7 rebounds and 7.0 assists at Seton Hall (Dre Davis); UMass (Matt Cross); Providence (Noah Locke), SMU (Samuell Williamson) and Ohio University (Gabe Wiznitzer) over the first five weeks of this season.

Many of them needed a fresh start. As Payne has discussed, they needed to leave Louisville to heal from their bizarre experience here.

Locke has an offensive rating of 111.3, which is considerably better than any U of L player this season. He's made 21 shots from distance, which is four more than any of Payne's players.

Locke's turnover rate is 10.9% of all possessions. Guess what? That's also better than any Louisville player.

Would Locke start for the Cards? Probably. He isn't what Louisville desperately needs — a competent point guard — but Locke would average more than than 20 minutes per game and greatly contribute.

Small forward is another position of need for the Cards. Davis would start for this team and might be its leading scorer. He's the second-leading scorer at Seton Hall, where he came back from missing three games because of a knee injury to score 10 points as the Pirates won at Rutgers on Sunday.

I'm not as convinced Cross would help, but he's played better for UMass than he did at Louisville. Maybe it is because he's a year older. Maybe it is because he hasn't played against Arkansas, Texas Tech, Maryland and Miami.

His brother, Tae, who de-committed from Louisville, has played like a freshman, turning the ball over on a quarter of his possessions while making only two of 13 threes.

Cross has been the second-leading scorer for Frank Martin at UMass. He's made 38.1% of his three-point attempts and scored a dozen points or more six times.

Williamson remains an enigma at SMU. After making only 2 of 13 three-pointers for Louisville last season, he is 0-9 at SMU this winter. But he's had five games with at least seven rebounds, including a 12-rebound game against Arizona State.

Williamson simply isn't a good shooter: 65% from the foul line, 45% on two-point attempts and fruitless from distance.

Although Wiznitzer is getting nearly 15 minutes per game at Ohio, he is the guy who would be least likely to play for Louisville.

Size is not Louisville's primary problem. The Cards need guys who can do positive things with the ball driving, passing, setting people up and shooting.

Locke, Davis and Cross would not have made Louisville a winning team. The Cards issues are considerably more alarming than that. But the struggle would not be as overwhelming if Davis and Locke had stayed.