Tennessee was hard to bear, but Louisville basketball took care of business against Montana.
Following a devastating road loss against the Tennessee Volunteers, Pat Kelsey and Louisville basketball limped back to Louisville, where they hoped to get things back on track against the Montana Griz at high noon on Saturday. The Cards would, again, be without the firepower of freshmen phenomenon Mikel Brown, Jr., who is still nursing a lower back injury.
To make matters worse, surging guard Kobe Rodgers would likewise not see game action, either, after being put on concussion protocol following a Knoxville defeat in which Rodgers was steam rolled by Jaylen Carey and drew multiple charges in the first half. And it wasn’t until the second twenty minutes of play that Kobe found himself concussed.
Needless to say, Louisville needed to recover, physically and mentally, after a torching in Tennessee that would end up being their worst shooting night of the season. On Saturday, the ball started to fall, again…eventually.
Playing low and starting slow
J’Vonne Hadley struck first with a slam, followed by a lob to Sanada Fru that put the Cards up, 7-2.
Aly Khalifa, on his way to leading all players with a game-high six assists, found Adrian Wooley for Louisville’s first three, which Hadley matched at the 12:36 mark: Louisville had an early lead, 15-10.
Fru true through and through
Sananda Fru has been an evolving source of offensive consistency and high field goal percentage, and Saturday might have been his best game as a Cardinal. He put back an Isaac McKneely miss ten minutes into the first half, which he followed with a driving layup two minutes later, then a reverse post shot that gave UofL a 23-16 advantage.
Fru would finish the game with eighteen points on 9-11 shooting, eight rebounds, and two assists.
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Threes falling, Cards flying
The Cards finally got some real separation when McKneely and Ryan Conwell got in on the action. Isaac knocked down two straight threes, at the 3:33 and 3:05 marks, respectively, hopefully concluding a two game stretch in which he has been ice cold from the field. Conwell, who initially struggled with his shot, completed an old fashioned three point play, after which Khalifa lobbed Fru to close out the half. Halftime began with Louisville up 42-20.
The Cards never looked back. Fru put in another Wooley lob to start the second period.
Next, on a particularly impressive series, Sananda blocked the Griz on one end of the court, then got out in transition for a reverse lob slam on the other, giving the Cards a 50-27 lead with sixteen minutes remaining.
Khalifa found Hadley, twice, Kasean Pryor hit layups, twice, and Conwell connected from three, twice: all on sequential offensive possessions. At this point, it was 66-40 with less than ten minutes remaining.
Khalifa and Khani Rooths both hit threes in the eleventh minute. Conwell got another triple three minutes later, and McKneely hit one more with less than three minutes to play, at 2:32. The ribbon on the final game before Christmas was when Cole Sherman hit a three with forty four seconds remaining, then Will Hanke got the final two points of the day for Louisville, making the score 94-54 when the clock struck zero.
The other side of one-sided
Although the game was, basically, a blowout, the Cards didn’t bounce back from the Knoxville knockout quite like I had hoped they would.
Conwell struggled from the field for most of the game, and there were quite a few instances of sloppy passing that led to turnovers. Though the team finished a respectable 35% from three, I remember looking up at one point to see they were an abysmal 5-23.
Grant it, Louisville was without Mikel Brown, Jr. and Kobe Rodgers, but the Cards failed to create any real breathing room between themselves and the Griz for most of the first half. It was encouraging to see Sananda Fru step up with such poise and consistency, but it should be noted that Montana is an extremely undersized team: their tallest player is 6’9.” Yes, the Cards won by 40, but the game didn’t always feel as mismatched as it obviously was, especially in the first half.
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Ghosts of Christmas past…present…
The losses against Tennessee and Arkansas raised questions that still, for myself, anyways, feel largely unanswered. The team seems to continue to lean heavily on their ability to knock down the three, even against Big Sky-level competition: hence the closeness of the contest until McKneely and Conwell managed to string together three three-point possessions late in the first half.
Fru has become a reliable post threat on offense, Khalifa is consistently the best passer on the court, and Pryor continues to find ways to impact the game in multiple ways (four points, seven rebounds, one assist): still, it never felt like Louisville was dominating the paint the way the Volunteers and Razorbacks did against the Cards, despite enjoying a considerable size advantage over Montana.
…And future
I’m looking for more consistency in the three point shot, and aggression from the front court. I absolutely love Aly Khalifa, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see Kasean Pryor scoring on both sides of the arc and heading the press, at times. I want to see them utilize their size as well, though.
Aly would be an incredible weapon if he had the ability to back people down, in addition to his distributive ability, and Pryor would be un-guardable if he could compliment his speed with post play.
One way or another, Louisville needs to figure out an identity in the paint: either to play off of their shooting game, or to keep them playing when their shots won’t fall.
There will continue to be a need for physicality and toughness, especially as conference games turn into conference tournaments. The pieces are there on this team…it’s just a matter of how they play, when they’re played.
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