Louisville Basketball: 5 keys for a successful 2018-19 campaign
4. Youth needs to develop quickly
As already mentioned, Louisville is returning only one player who averaged more than 20 minutes per game this past season. There are many by-products of this but perhaps the most important one is that the Cardinals will be extremely inexperienced during this upcoming campaign. Although V.J. King and the four incoming transfers for Louisville will bring some much-needed leadership both on and off the court, the team will still feature plenty of youngsters.
In fact, my projected starting lineup for the Cardinals in 2018-19 would feature three rising sophomores in Darius Perry, Malik Williams, and Jordan Nwora. Considering these three players combined to start just 15 games last season (12 by Williams), this starting lineup would be inexperienced. Regardless of whether or not all these sophomores start, they will each have to play valuable roles. Given this, learning experiences will certainly occur throughout this upcoming campaign and each player will need to develop quickly during this year if Louisville is to be successful.
To break this youth down further, it is important to mention that each potential starting sophomore will have some major shoes to fill. Starting with Darius Perry, the 6-foot-2 guard will have a tough time replacing Quentin Snider, who started 98 of his 131 games with the program and was a senior leader last season. While Perry was solid all-around last season in under 15 minutes per game, he will need to be much more efficient as a scorer. (Note: Incoming transfer Christen Cunningham could also easily be the starting point guard.)
Next up, 6-foot-11 Malik Williams will look to help shoulder some of the responsibility left by Ray Spalding. Williams may have started 12 contests last season as a freshman but only played 10.6 minutes per game. His role will see a dramatic increase during this upcoming campaign but hopefully the arrival of transfer Steven Enoch will lessen the burden he has to carry.
Lastly, wing Jordan Nwora will be tasked will taking over the starting spot vacated by Deng Adel when he turned pro. Although Nwora was a knockdown shooter who provided a quality 12.0 minutes per game as a freshman, Adel was Louisville’s leading scorer and was also second on the team in rebounding and assists.
Obviously, these sophomores will not be tasked with filling these shoes alone. Louisville’s bench will seemingly be sprinkled with a few more veterans in form of four transfers as well as rising juniors Dwayne Sutton and Ryan McMahon. Speaking of those transfers, though, we should probably investigate those as well.