Louisville Basketball: 2019-20 season review of the Cardinals
By Neil Adler
The Cardinals’ highs and lows
Louisville commenced 2019-20 with a total bang. The Cardinals, for one, rattled off nine-consecutive conquests to kick off the term, sending them to No. 1 in the polls for the inaugural occasion in six campaigns.
As part of that streak, since the ACC expanded to 20 league tilts, Louisville squared off with Miami on the road, and against Pittsburgh at home, before the new year appeared. The Cardinals crushed each foe with ease.
One day after climbing to the No. 1 ranking, Louisville hosted then-No. 4 Michigan on Dec. 3 in the annual ACC–Big Ten Challenge. The Cardinals’ suffocating defense perplexed the Wolverines, and Louisville prevailed, 58-43, erasing any conceivable doubt about the Cardinals amounting to one of the premier squads across the national landscape.
Louisville, by the way, cataloged a fantastic 17-1 record at the KFC Yum! Center in 2019-20. Additional delights on the Cardinals’ own turf are a besting of Virginia and an absolute pasting of Syracuse by 24 points.
As noted earlier, Louisville scored a huge win at then-No. 3 Duke, one of only two losses by the Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium in 2019-20. The Cardinals also destroyed N.C. State, a fringe NCAA Tournament group, by 20 points in Raleigh.
On the flip side, Louisville did happen upon some bummer ordeals. A mere eight days after the Cardinals attained the No. 1 rating, they got beat by Texas Tech, the 2019 Big Dance finalist, in the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Louisville suffered a pair of setbacks in a row to Kentucky and Florida State, which is understandable, but also to Georgia Tech and Clemson. Those latter outcomes versus the Yellow Jackets and the Tigers probably represented rock bottom for the Cardinals in 2019-20.
The Seminoles swept their regular-stanza series with Louisville, a punch in the gut to the Cardinals. Equally as painful, however, is that Louisville had a chance to tie Florida State as co-champions of the ACC when the Cardinals traveled to Charlottesville to battle the Cavaliers in the final regular-season contest.
Louisville, though, fell by three points to UVA. Oh, so close.