PREVIEW: Louisville men’s basketball travels to Charlottesville to face Virginia Cavaliers

By Derek DeBurger

Louisville’s long winter break ends as they head to Charlottesville to play the Virginia Cavaliers on Wednesday.

It’s funny—when Louisville is great, they have an incredibly difficult time beating Virginia; when Louisville is bad, some fluky things tend to happen. No, Louisville has not somehow upset Virginia since joining the ACC, but they have played the Cavs much closer than they should’ve multiple times in recent years.

Take last year, when Louisville lost to Virginia—then a top-25 team—by only two points on their way to the worst season in program history. In what looks like another terrible year, does Louisville have some upset magic in them? If the Cards can get hot from three, then this could turn into a close game fast.

Louisville—albeit, still bad—is much improved from last season.

This Virginia team is worse than last year’s. Tony Bennett-coached teams always show up defensively, but the real determining factor is how they look on offense; Bennett almost flat-out refuses to give players minutes who have yet to grasp his defensive schemes.

There are two factors, however, that lead me to believe that this won’t be a very close contest. First, since joining the ACC in 2014, Virginia is the only team in the conference that Louisville hasn’t beaten on the road. As “conference rivals” they play each other twice a year every year. Secondly, the Cavs are coming off of a terrible loss to Notre Dame by 22 points.

While it may look like Notre Dame competing with Louisville in a race to the bottom among ACC teams this season, there’s no question they have the least talented roster. This season, according to KenPom, Virginia rank 156^th in the country in adjusted offense. Coming off such an embarrassing loss, there is no doubt in my mind that the Cavs will want to show everyone that their loss to Notre Dame wasn’t the norm.

I don’t expect the Cards to win, and I don’t even expect them to compete, but I’m still hoping to see them play hard.

Unfortunately, that’s where the bar is for the men’s basketball program.