LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Sometimes watching a game live will fool you. The second watch, however, is usually a little more analytical. Reviewing Louisville's Big Monday loss at Florida State, the second half was no less ugly the second time around. But I did come away with a few firmer convictions.
After a horrendous baseline inbounds pass toward the backcourt was stolen and converted into an easy Florida State layup to put the Seminoles up by nine (after they had trailed by 12), ESPN’s Jay Bilas posed the question, "To whom does Louisville turn to stabilize this?"
It was a key question for the game, and remains a key question for Louisville’s season.
First this: I tend not to pay attention to excuses the night of a game. Louisville was fresh enough to execute its game plan and lead by double digits. To have that fall apart completely in the second half is difficult to swallow.
"I think fatigue was a factor," Louisville coach Chris Mack told Bob Valvano on his postgame radio show, after Valvano had asked him if fatigue had been a factor.
And to be honest, some of the things that sound like excuse-making are valid considerations. It was Louisville’s third game in six days. It was played without Malik Williams, who undoubtedly would’ve made a defensive difference.
Fans (on Twitter, mostly) wanted me to examine the officiating. Louisville got a handful of tough whistles on the defensive end in the second half. Florida State would initiate contact, then finish and get the whistle. Ryan McMahon was shoved on a made basket, and whistled for the foul. David Johnson picked up his fourth foul after an FSU offensive player walked with the ball, twice.
Those were tough breaks, and Louisville got none on the other end. When Louisville initiated similar contact on offense, the whistles didn't come. But that’s life on the road. Teams have said the same things after games at the KFC Yum! Center. It’s just part of it.
“We missed some layups in the second half that we’d gotten in the first half,” Mack said. “We missed some open threes, from some guys that I want shooting them. Had those gone in, you probably wouldn’t be talking about offensive struggles. It’s not as if we had 19-20 turnovers, which can happen to a lot of teams in here. I’ll take Jordan Nwora open threes with some stagger actions. Ryan had some. We’ve got to find a way to come up with some more offensive rebounds, maybe, but they’re big, they’re athletic, they have a plan, they switch. You’ve got to try to get in the lane, like we did in the first half, spray out, make shots, get to the foul line, which, we couldn’t get to the foul line, couldn’t get a whistle by initiating the contact. It is what it is.”
The worst mistakes, however, were not by officials, but by Louisville players. The bad inbounds pass which robbed Louisville of a chance to cut its deficit to five and instead left them down nine was a big one. Louisville’s problem with those late-game set pieces against FSU pressure revealed an execution issue. The Cardinals spent their last timeout with 7:54 left in the game to avoid a 5-second call. The long inbounds from the baseline into the backcourt is a sign that the inbounds sets weren’t working. That pass is a safety valve, and in this case, Florida State was sitting on it, and the pass was underthrown.
With three minutes to play, freshman David Johnson didn’t get the ball past halfcourt before a 10-second violation.
Raise your hand if you remember the last time a Louisville basketball team was whistled for a 10-second violation. Walk the ball up has not been a mentality here for a while. Especially against an excellent FSU defense that doesn’t let you get into offense easily, every second counts in the half-court.
Those things are killers. In a game with little margin for error, Louisville made too many. It was 10 for 22 on layups. If it only misses seven layups, the game is much different.
And most important, Jordan Nwora and Ryan McMahon combined to miss six open three-pointers in the second half. Only one of them was rushed. They were just missed. They were good looks. Most of them came from the same spot, from the top left. They just didn’t go. And for Louisville, threes falling is an important thing.
In ACC play this season, Louisville has won 14 games and lost 4. In the 14 wins, it is shooting 44.1 percent from 3-point range and getting 37.4 percent of its scoring from beyond the arc. In the four losses, it is shooting 24.1 percent from 3-point range and getting 26.2 percent of its points from beyond the arc.
Bottom line, against better teams, when Louisville isn’t making threes it has a hard time replacing that scoring from mid-range jump shots, finishes at the rim or free throws. It can do those things, but it has had a hard time doing them.
There have been exceptions. It shot threes well in its first loss to Florida State, but the Seminoles made 11 threes in that game. It didn’t get a third of its points from beyond the arc in the win at Duke, but that was one of its most up-tempo games of the year and it generated a good many points off turnovers.
Louisville doesn’t want to be a three-point shooting team. But in ACC play, that’s what it has amounted to.
At FSU, Lamarr Kimble, and others, did a great job of penetrating to the free-throw line, shaking the defense, and making the mid-range jumper. Florida State adjusted a bit, staying in front of penetrators better in the second half and staying in passing lanes to cut off options. It gave up a few open threes, but Louisville didn’t make them.
A couple of other scattered thoughts on playing time. First, Dwayne Sutton is, as Mack has said more times than you can count, a warrior. But he’s playing a ton of minutes. Mack said he wanted to play him fewer minutes during the year so he wouldn’t wear down at the end of the season. He played 31.4 minutes per game last season. He’s averaging 31.7 per game this season.
Second, I feel at times for Samuell Williamson. He’s playing behind Nwora, so you know that alone will limit his time on the court. And maybe physically Florida State wasn’t the best matchup for him. Yet he made some good things happen in his time on the court Tuesday. He had four points and a rebound in eight first-half minutes, but only played three in the second half. Mack probably had a good reason for that, but he still seems underutilized at times.
Finally this: Florida State is really good. Louisville came in with an outstanding game plan, withstood the loss of its team leader, most vocal player and best defensive player, and hung tough until fatigue and FSU pressure overtook them.
But FSU deserves credit for bringing the pressure. FSU is a whole team of Dwayne Suttons. They don’t stop coming. They are relentless, talented, physical and athletic. They deserve to win the ACC. Their wins over Louisville have been no fluke.
If they were to play again in Greensboro, with a healthy Louisville, I think it would be a good game, and might be an important one for Louisville to get to play, to prove to itself it can handle that kind of opponent.
Louisville took its shot and faltered late. The ACC championship wasn’t lost in Tallahassee, it was lost – if indeed it was – in Atlanta, and in Clemson, S.C. Louisville now gets something it hasn’t gotten since late December– time to heal.
Six days off before Virginia Tech at home. Another week off before visiting Virginia. The last time it had a long layoff, it lost back-to-back games to Kentucky and FSU. But now is a different story. It needs some time to regroup.
As hard as the meltdown at Florida State was to watch, events recede quickly come March. Louisville’s best bet is to turn the page quickly, and proceed with anticipation.
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