By Harry Barsan and Derek DeBurger

No. 13 Louisville will see some familiar faces Thursday as the Stanford Cardinal will look for revenge in the ACC quarterfinals.

Stanford already has their sea legs under them, gritting out a victory against Cal on Wednesday that included 16 lead changes.

Rest or rust?

In their first go around in Saturday’s game, Louisville completely shut down the Cardinal offense.

Maxime Raynaud recorded just a single bucket and four points in the first half. While had a much more productive second, reaching 17 points, he didn’t meet the standard he needed to to carry his team.

Much of his abnormal performance, however, can be attributed to his abnormal missing of wide-open shots from three-point range in the first half. He didn’t get a ton of these looks, but he definitely didn’t make the Cards pay for giving them to him.

Part of the reason he had these open looks from deep was how much Louisville packed the paint.

Stanford as a team shot 33.3% from inside the arc with only a handful of shots in the paint. Raynaud himself only made two shots inside the paint.

With some rest, he had a much more balanced game against Cal, reaching 23 on 56.6% true shooting including two game-sealing free throws.

But perhaps the biggest step up in production was from the supporting cast. The top three scorers behind Raynaud combined for 46 points against Cal versus the 23 they combined for against Louisville.

The Cards simply dared anyone other than Raynaud to beat them and they couldn’t. They practically begged Jaylen Blakes to shoot threes, and he couldn’t capitalize.

Against Cal, Blakes was able to score 21 by playing much more within himself. He did almost all his damage inside the arc.

Louisville really doesn’t need to change much.

Even if Stanford hits some of the open shots Louisville gave them the first go around, the Cards still won by 20 points off a lackluster offensive performance. Look for the same ball pressure and no-middle tendencies the Cards ran the first go around.

In a drought

As mentioned, Stanford did a good job limiting Louisville’s offense on Saturday. But that’s mainly because of the absence of Reyne Smith.

Smith didn’t play against the Cardinal due to an ankle injury suffered against Cal. It was a classic subtraction by subtraction, as Louisville looked a step off in every area.

There wasn’t that person the defense needed to know the whereabouts of at all times, so the Cardinal were able to hone in on Chucky Hepburn, Terrence Edwards Jr. and whoever else might have been heating up.

Against Cal, Stanford’s defense did not look impressive at all.

They allowed Andrej Stojakovic to score a career-high 37 points, and do so however he saw fit. This was also as Cal entered the game severely undermanned, so Stojakovic was the clear top focus.

There’s clearly a weakness that Hepburn and Edwards will be able to take advantage of, especially if Smith is available Thursday.

One way that Stanford did excel was informing turnovers, grabbing 11 steals on 16 forced turnovers against Cal. Louisville laughed the ball up 10 times against the Cardinal, which is not many but it’s somewhat notable considering how slow a pace Stanford plays at.

While all signs point toward Louisville getting the season sweep over the Cardinal, rematches in such a short timeframe can be cause for chaos.

But if the Cards keep the same focus and game-plan as five days prior, they should reach their first ACC tournament semifinals in program history.

Photo by Vinny Porco