Louisville Game Thread (Wednesday 2/15, 7pm est ESPNU)

Men's Basketball
61

JPJ West is a nice arena

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62

Sorry. Hoos by 20+ tonight Lord willing.

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63

I guess we’re kinda looking past the Cardinals in this thread. Had to look up to remind myself what thread I was in :wink:

Have to say, I kinda look forward to games like this for a respite in the middle of the conference schedule. But at the same time, I hate these trap games. Nothing good comes of them. Either you win, which you’re supposed to, and you get no NET benefit, or you lose and, well, let’s not even go there.

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64

Nevertheless, I’m with @BDragon, I’m taking the Hoos, giving the points, and betting the over.

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65

We know Tony won’t run up the score, and instead if we can get up 20+ down the stretch, empty his bench which in past instances has let the opponent deflate the final margin in the closing minutes.

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I don’t know about running up the score, but we’ll continue to try to score as long as we can. Where I see a big margin coming is from defense. Louisville averages 64 ppg, of which Ellis is responsible for 17.4. Pretty sure we’ll be able to shut him down, and I don’t see where else they get the scoring from. 72-52 seems like a pretty reasonable outcome.

That said, they did manage to score a bunch recently against both FSU and Miami.

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67

Louisville has played 7 ACC home games:

  • Wins: 1 (GT)
  • Close losses (less than 5) : 2 (FSU and Cuse)
  • In-between losses: 1 (Wake)
  • Blowout losses (20+): 3 (Pitt, Miami, UNC)

Fwiw, they are 0-6 on the road, with only one loss being less than 10, but notably it was their last game, and against a good team (93-85 v Miami). With a Huntley-Hatfield DNP, too.

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68

We home or at Yum tonight?

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69

Yum

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70

Yes to both

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71

Line has dropped to UVa -16 getting real tasty. O/U 127.5

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72

That O/U is tempting. Both ways… Tony’s either going to decide he wants to go all in on defense and suffocate them … or we are going to go nuts scoring.

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73

Love that analysis. I feel like the over is so tempting and I’m sticking with that. I feel like if the defense puts the clamps on UofL the offense will be jumping and make up the difference.

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74

This could be one of those where Ville scores like 8 in a half

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75

They’ve got a nice trio of shooting wing/forwards in Michael James, Kamari Lands, and Jae’Lyn Withers. All of them shooting the 3-ball well in ACC play, all of them with great size for their positions at the 2-3-4.

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76

I wouldn’t touch this one. We’re coming off an emotional win, and playing on the road against a team everyone knows is bad. It’s hard to create a bigger letdown game. Thankfully our next game isn’t one that we’ll be looking ahead to.

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Agree. A few days ago Miami was in the exact same position, coming off a big win over Duke, and fell asleep at the wheel against the Cards in a game far tighter than it should’ve been, single digits down the stretch.

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Home. JPJ West.

Ah, Dave beat me to it. We own that place.

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79

You’re right about Withers, who’s scored in double figures in 8 of the last 11 games. But James has been streaky, and Lands has been a non-factor except against WKU, GT, FSU, and the recent game against Miami. Though I’ll concede GT, FSU, and Miami were all recent games. I’ll also concede that they have length, but we just beat a much more talented, huge team in Duke.

Still, Ellis is the head of the snake. He’s averaging almost double his nearest teammates. Stop him, and the rest of the team will struggle to make up the difference. It will take a really bad game from us and a really good game from them to lose this.

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This kind of game is a win-win. We either win the game, or I get to watch an absolute epic meltdown in the game threads. Probably both!

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