After a frustrating loss against Stanford, bad trends are becoming louder for Louisville basketball.
Louisville basketball opened up conference play against California exactly the way you hoped they would. In spite of being on the road and minus their starting point guard, the Cards jumped out to an early ten to nothing lead and, with the exception of a frightening minute thirty in the second half, kept their foot on the gas through the final buzzer.
The offense was more balanced than it had been at earlier moments of uncertainty in 2025 as the team managed to overcome everything the Bears threw at them, and the challenge of playing on the road on the other side of the country. Louisville looked to finish their short tour of the west coast by winning another road game in similarly convincing fashion at Stanford.
Unfortunately, the same team that looked surprisingly organized and focused without Mikel Brown, Jr., in the final game of 2025, looked every bit as disorganized and out of sorts as you would have expected a squad with a probable lottery pick on the bench to perform, in their first contest of 2026.
Shooting poor-formance
Though there were several facets of the team’s play that felt lackluster, the one that jumps out most prominently was the shooting performance. For a team that leans on three point shooting and high offensive production, the Cardinals struggled mightily from behind the arc.
Ryan Conwell, the most reliable scorer on the team this year, missed his first nine shots from the field: eight of them were from three. Conwell finished the game with a team high 18 points, but needed to take 21 shots to get there. He connected on only six of his attempted field goals, and was a shocking two of fourteen from three. For perspective, Stanford’s entire team shot only five more total threes than Conwell did alone, and beat his make total by seven.
One Cardinal better than two Cardinals
It’s appropriate that the game was the Cardinal versus the Cardinals, because the performance of Stanford guard Ebuka Okorie was basically worth that of any two of Louisville’s players. Okorie finished with 28 points, shooting 50% from the field and connecting on two of five three pointers.
Chisom Okpara added 17 for Stanford, who was more than twice as accurate as Louisville was from behind the arc while only taking two thirds the amount of attempts. Both halves were relatively close, but Stanford won each: the score at halftime was 35-34, and 80-76 when the game ended.
Going dark from behind the arc
I’m not sure it would be accurate to blame poor shooting as the sole reason for Louisville’s three losses this season, but it is undeniably a commonality in all of them. Against the Cardinal, the Cards were an abysmal 6-27 from three: that’s 22%. They were a similar 7-34 (21%) against Tennessee, and 8-37 against Arkansas (22%).
While it may be somewhat encouraging that, in the games that they shoot poorly, Louisville appears to be chucking a regressive amount of misses, the quality of their shooting remains the same while that of their opponent worsens. While it’s undeniable that the losses against the Volunteers and the Razorbacks were not pretty performances, in and of themselves, the quality of those games is almost as ugly as the very fact of losing to Stanford: the Cardinal have suffered losses to UNLV(7-6), Seattle U(12-5), and Notre Dame (10-5) already. UNLV had a net ranking of 221 in early December, when they bested Stanford, by the way.
What to do when your shot is shot
There has been a beacon of consistency and hope for the Cards’ offensive attack, but the very fact of it’s reliability makes the rest of the team’s insistence on chucking three after three even more frustrating. The beacon is Sananda Fru, who finished with 15 points and 8 rebounds on a perfect 6-6 shooting in twenty seven minutes of play. Add that to the double-double he earned against Montana, and the 13 points and 14 rebounds he put up earlier this week, and the fact is this: Louisville has a reliable big man who has shown consistent growth and, at times, the ability to dominate a game.
I love being a fast-paced, three point heavy attack team, but when the ball won’t fall the Cards have got to learn when to lean on post play. I truly believe that Louisville has the interior size, and strength in their backcourt, to revert to being paint point producing players when their triple is good for nothing. If they don’t have the willingness, however, to be versatile, then they will continue to live, and die, by the strength of their shot.
Back Tuesday, or bad back on Tuesday
The Cards have Duke at home on Tuesday, and the absence of Mikel Brown, Jr. feels more noticeable than ever. My hope was that the team would grow through his time being injured, but they have, instead, been schizophrenic.
Brown has shown the presence of mind to begin attacking when deep shots aren’t cutting it, ever since the lackluster shooting display of his first college game. With Brown still down, and the Devils coming to town, the season has been a tale of two teams thus far: which one will show up on Tuesday?
The group that manhandled the Bears, or the Cardinals that lost to the Cardinal?
Louisville basketball is mediocre at best. They beat up on weaker teams as they should but cannot beat ranked ones. No defense and no interior presence. Coach is more of a cheerleader than coach. Seems to never have a strategy other than hoisting a bunch of 3’s and hope they go in.