By Derek DeBurger
Louisville will face their arch-rivals when the No. 9 Kentucky Wildcats come to the KFC Yum! Center on Thursday.
Short of the 2014 Sweet Sixteen matchup, this might have the highest stakes in the history of the rivalry as it appears as if head coach Kenny Payne is coaching for his job. It’s unsure what outcome would warrant the retention of the head coach—only athletic director Josh Heird knows that—but a win would probably do the trick.
Can Louisville actually win? I don’t know…maybe.
Probably not.
The Cards have played up to their competition this year in a major way, and, coming off of the best performance of Payne’s tenure, there’s maybe a little bit of hope they can ride a wave to an upset. It’s probably possible, but there’s a very specific way the Cards need to attack the Cats to steal a victory.
Kentucky likes to get out and run, and they run fast. Head coach John Calipari, the mentor of Payne, runs the same offense as Louisville, but they run it much better. The Cats score a whopping 90.2 points per game, good enough for seventh in the country. Six players for Kentucky average double-digit points, with a seventh waiting in the wings at 9.6 points per game.
The way Kentucky scores so much so fast is in the transition via steals and getting out on defensive rebounds.
The way you stop this is simple in theory, but more difficult in execution.
The Cards just need to prevent fast breaks as much as humanly possible by holding onto the ball and sending three men back in transition defense after every shot that goes up.
It’s as simple as that.
Kentucky is way worse in the half-court when they don’t get to show off the full extent of their athleticism. The introduction of Aaron Bradshaw makes Kentucky a better rebounding team, but they are still pretty pedestrian overall since losing Oscar Tshiebwe.
That’s pretty much it to trying to defend Kentucky. I could tell you about how elite they are at shooting threes, how amazingly they share the ball, or how they have their most talented roster since 2018, but to beat the Cats you have to score points.
And that’s not super easy to do.
Kentucky gives up 73.5 points per game, but that number isn’t representative of how good they are defensively. Kentucky gives up so many points because they play so fast, but they rack up steals and blocks regularly. According to Kenpom, the Cats have the 44th-best defensive efficiency. The Cards have made significant strides in holding onto the ball since last season, and are a pretty athletic team themselves, but they’ll need to move with purpose off-ball to get good looks if they want to score on Kentucky. They have not shown consistency in doing that in the past two seasons.
This is going to be a tough game in what will most likely be a tough environment. I don’t think the Cards will get it done, but I do think it’ll be closer than most are expecting.
Is a close loss enough for Payne to keep his job? I just don’t know.
