With a brutal stretch of games ahead for Louisville basketball, it was business as usual against NJIT.
The most important game in the history of any Pat Kelsey program is always the next one. The two weeks following Thanksgiving kick off one of the most harrowing stretches of any schedule in college basketball, as Louisville basketball will match up against John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks and the Tennessee Volunteers, coached by Rick Barnes. These two road games, against nationally ranked SEC powerhouses, sandwich contests against regional rivals Indiana and Memphis.
Given the looming challenges, it would have been understandable for the Cards to lack laser focus and luster on Wednesday night’s game against Grant Billmeier’s New Jersey Institute of Technology Highlanders. Nothing, however, could have been further from the truth.
Back to form
Ryan Conwell had an unusually inaccurate first half in the Eastern Michigan game. He has, otherwise, been the most dependable offensive weapon in Kelsey’s deep arsenal this season, and needed only fifteen seconds of game clock on Wednesday to remind fans why he was arguably the best guard in last year’s portal.
Conwell knocked down one of his eventual eight threes on Louisville’s first possession, on his way to a game-and-season high 32 points. Mikel Brown, Jr. then lobbed Sananda Fru, an early-game set that Cards’ fans should recognize at this point, and Isaac McKneely got his first triple on the following possession. Conwell then got another from behind the arc, giving Louisville a 13-2, double digit lead that would only expand as the night progressed.
From leading the Highlanders to bleeding the Highlanders
A Vangelis Zougris slam from a no-look, Mikel Brown, Jr. pass at the 9:11 mark increased the lead to twenty points, 29-9, and J’Vonne Hadley’s three under the three minute mark made the lead thirty, at 45-15.
The first half ended the way it began, with Ryan Conwell knocking down a three, making the score 54-20 after twenty minutes of play.
Round two: Same old story
The second half began like the first half ended…and also how the first half began: another triple from Conwell. That was pretty much the story of the evening. This was one of the most one-sided basketball games I’ve ever watched. Louisville would finish 20 of 48 from three, shooting close to 50% from behind the arc for most of the contest. In fact, if you took away all field goals made from inside the arc, the Cards still would have enjoyed not just a victory, but a comfortable, thirteen point one. Accounting for baskets on both sides of the line, though, Louisville walked away with a 104-47 thumping of NJIT.
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More than just a shooting clinic
Shooting wasn’t the only thing the Cards did well on Wednesday: they never took their foot off the gas in any facet of the game. Not only did Louisville basketball win the rebounding war handily, grabbing thirty nine boards to the Highlanders’ eighteen, but they also ended up with more rebounds on offense than NJIT managed cumulatively (Louisville 20 offensive rebounds, NJIT 18 total).
Louisville had four times as many assists as the Highlanders, at 24-6: over half of the Cards’ assists came from Mikel Brown, Jr. and Aly Khalifa (seven and six, respectively). The Cards has twice as many steals, and over three times as many points off of turnovers. This really was an all-out domination of one team by another.
Pedal to the metal
What I found most remarkable about Wednesday, though, wasn’t the shooting performance that Kelsey’s Cards put on for the home court crowd, or the lopsided statistical totals. It was, instead, the incredible, sustained intensity and effort maintained by UofL, even as a lead that was almost immediately double digits ballooned to be nearly sixty by the time the final buzzer sounded.
Sanada Fru was creating second chances for the Cardinal offense with the same intensity at the game’s inception that Vangelis Zougris was when the lead got into the twenty-point neighborhood. Kobe Rodgers was grabbing offensive rebounds, pushing the ball into transition, and leading a one-man press that culminated in a blocked fade away, with a ferocity that suggested the contest was neck-and-neck at a point when there really wasn’t much of a contest at all.
Kelsey has put together a team that is almost unbelievably deep: the backup center is the best passing big in the NCAA. The Cards have routed two opponents in three days without needing meaningful minutes from freshman phenomenon Mikel Brown, Jr., who was almost unheard-from until he knocked down back-to-back threes as the game was coming to a close. Ryan Conwell showed up in a big way on Wednesday, but struggled mightily on Monday: it didn’t matter, though.
There are so many options on this team, so many shooters that have to be respected, and only so many minutes to go around. It’s really apparent, especially when in person, that these guys are going to fight like their lives depend on it when they get in the game, regardless of who they are playing and what the scoreboard says.
Done, done…On with the next one
The next two weeks will be a real measure of just how good this team is, where they are, and, by extension, how far they could potentially go. The Cards will be facing household names in coaching from powerhouse conferences, with their own daunting journey through the ACC regular season set to begin soon thereafter.
While it’s very unlikely that they can count on hitting twenty threes a game, the competition for playing time all-but-guarantees that Louisville’s opponents will have their hands full, for a full forty minutes, every time anybody laces up against them, and at every position on the court.
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