By Derek DeBurger Elizabeth Scanland

The No. 22 Louisville Cardinals will host the No. 11 Oklahoma Sooners in the SEC/ACC challenge.

This will be Louisville’s hardest home-game of the season so far, and a great test for the rest of the season.

The Sooners have proven to be a strong offensive team averaging 92 points per game.

Beers all around

Center Raegan Beers lead her team with 19.7 points per game on 72.2% from the field and grabs 9.7 rebounds per game.

Beers is the lifeblood of this Sooners offense. She can attack pretty much any defense any way she chooses. Given the fact that the Louisville bigs were nearly useless in slowing down Lauren Betts of UCLA, the better option might be to let Beers get hers but shut down everyone else.

Former-Louisville guard Peyton Verhulst leads the everyone else. Verhulst is second on the team with 13.4 point game and leads the team with 5.3 assists. In her last game against Duke, she had a 25-point triple-double, joining Caitlin Clark as the only Division-1 player with a 25-point triple double over a ranked opponent in the last 25 years.

The Sooners as a team are averaging 24.6 assists a game, which is the most in the country. On the flips side, however, they average 17.4 turnovers a game, the 210th rank nationally. Louisville has done a good job at forcing teams into copious amounts of turnovers this season, so they’ll have ample opportunity to get out in transition which could be the difference in the game.

Tough interior

The Sooners’ defense is inside-out, meaning their defense gets progressively worse the further out you go.

They hold opponents to 32.6% shooting from the field and get five blocks a game. But the rest of their team-defensive stats are good-not-great.

They’re a stingy group, but their biggest weakness is their discipline. Oklahoma fouls 18.4 times a game, 244th in the country. Attacking the paint could prove risky, but a risk the Cards might have to take in an attempt to gets the Sooners stars in foul trouble.

While the Cards are favored to win this game, it won’t come as an easy task but will be an impressive win if they can do so and will help gain more national attention.

Louisville is looking to advance to 6-2 with thier first ranked win of the season.

Photo Courtesy // Mallory Peak, Louisville Athletics