By Derek DeBurger
Louisville got the brakes blown off of them by the Pittsburgh Panthers in a game that was over before it began.
With guards Skyy Clark and Hercy Miller out due to injury, Ty-Laur Johnson was the only available point guard. However, devastating news that Johnson would be a late scratch meant that the Cards would have no available points guards and only seven available scholarship players.
The lack of guards showed early as the Panthers ground their way to an 11-2 start. After a timeout to talk things over, the Cards looked good on offense and were able to spread the ball around. The Cards went on their own 10-0 run to take a one-point lead, and kept pace with Pitt due to the excellent first-half performance of Kaleb Glenn. Glenn had 15 points in the first half alone, tying his career high.
After the Cards took an 18-17 lead off of a three-pointer from Glenn, the offensive effort dried up. To make matters worse, during the Cards’ early comeback, the defense never played better; rather, Pitt just missed shots. The Panthers now starting firing, went on a 10-0 run, and Blake Hinson finished the half with 27 points.
Louisville was down at the half 27-37.
It turns out that the short stretch where the Cards made the game competitive was an outlier. Louisville’s offense was stagnant for most of the game, with the best periods in the second half coming after the game was firmly out of reach. Glenn ended up setting a new career-high with 17 points, but that means he was only able to muster up two points through the entire second half.
Hinson was the Panthers’ leading scorer heading into the game, and he had already put up a monster first half. Instead of changing the game plan to try and stop Hinson, the Cards simply continued to let him torch the defense finishing with a career-high 41 points—the most scored by a Pitt player in the last 27 years. Outside of Hinson, the Cards only forced three turnovers and applied almost zero meaningful pressure during the game.
Louisville would lose 59-86.
The lack of guards only highlighted the glaring issues that have surrounded this team for the past two seasons. Louisville needed to make major changes to their offensive and defensive approach to stand a chance going into the game shorthanded; instead, the game plan was the same and the lack of depth made the approach almost entirely ineffective. The talent is glaring, it just is not being properly utilized.
Louisville falls to 8-18 on the season, 3-12 (last place in the ACC), 1-26 away from the KFC Yum! Center under Kenny Payne and 12-46 overall under Payne.
