Louisville Basketball: Takeaways from Cardinals win over Duke at Cameron Indoor

Jordan Nwora’s disappearing act

In what hopefully doesn’t become a season-long trend for Chris Mack’s crew, undisputed team leader Jordan Nwora had another dud of a performance against elite competition. Nwora scored an inefficient 22 points on 23 shots against Michigan, 14 points on 16 shots against Texas Tech, and eight points on 20% shooting in a woeful performance against Kentucky in an OT loss. Now to Nwora’s credit, he has played well in some big games this year. His 32-point masterpiece in a close loss to Florida State comes to mind, but the overall trend which continued on Saturday isn’t great.

In Louisville’s 79-73 win over Duke, Nwora finished with six points on 3-for-12 shooting from the field, which included going 0-for-3 from the 3-point line and not getting to the free throw line once. Now, this is not to say that Louisville’s 6-foot-7 leader wasn’t aggressive. Nwora went 1-for-3 in the first half at Cameron Indoor but just how he did it was the important thing. Nwora ran the floor hard, forcing the Duke bigs to try to keep up and opening up space on the perimeter for Louisville in the process. His lone first-half basket was a dunk on a nice feed from Fresh Kimble. As long as the Cardinals’ guards are looking for Nwora, he should be able to have a positive effect on a game.

But in the second half of Saturday’s game at Cameron Indoor, Nwora stayed aggressive while trying to get out of his slump. He went 2-for-9 in the second half, a half in which Duke outscored Louisville 41-37. Nwora made some contributions (two assists and a steal) outside of scoring and rebounding, and as long as he is very active on the floor, Louisville will ultimately be fine. But when it gets to March and you are only playing the toughest teams in the nation, a 3-for-12 night Nwora isn’t gonna cut it.