I meant to get to this topic yesterday, but the fact that Louisville struggled with Happy Osborne’s Georgetown Tigers again in Wednesday night’s exhibition game raised my interest.
Georgetown played the Cards neck-and-neck and even led in the second half before Louisville pulled away for an 80-68 win.
Asked Mike Rutherford of the Card Chronicle to give me his thoughts.
Here’s his reply:
Outside of the spotty outside shooting, it was just about everything I expected. Samardo Samuels dominated in the paint against an undersized NAIA team, the Cards made careless decisions with the ball, they committed a lot of reach fouls becasue they were out of position defensively, but ultimately they found the run they needed in the second half to secure a double-digit victory.
Pitino has stated multiple times that this team has a ways to go defensively – and that was obvious Wednesday night – but what really concerns me about this group offensively is its lack of quickness and playmakers. Louisville has a handful of guys who can hit the outside shot consistently, but just one or two who can create space by thesmelves to get that shot up. The lone exception is Peyton Siva who looked amazingly quick and had no problem getting into the lane and creating shots for teammates. It’s no coincidence that he was the catalyst for the second half run that put the contest out-of-reach.
Kyle Kuric was the other bright spot. The sophomore looked light years ahead of where he was a year ago, making several key plays when the game was still in jeopardy. I’d expect him to get the start over Reggie Delk against Bellarmine, but even if he performs just as well as he did Wednesday, it still won’t shed much light on how effective he can be against Big East quality competition.
The effort was certainly there, which is very encouraging, but the fact that the game was being played in late October was quite apparent. Overall I’d give Louisville a C+, which is what I think most people anticipated.
