Louisville Basketball: 2020-21 keys to victory against Wisconsin Badgers
By Ian Mumm
Playing to Their Own Tempo
Despite being shorthanded and far from full strength, the Cardinals have established themselves as a formidable team to face. They play very slowly, 19th lowest pace in the nation, and look to get quality out of their possessions over quantity.
Louisville has excelled this way as a fringe top-20 overall field goal percentage team as a result of it. With 85.3% of their shot attempts coming from their starting five players, it’s incredibly important for this team to remain patient and find the best opportunities to take teams down.
In what figures to be a very competitive and close game against Wisconsin, the Cardinals cannot afford to get out of character and suddenly flip the script. The Badgers are another program that prefers to slow it down, making it quite easy for Louisville to find comfort in this game. However, Wisconsin is a talented defensive team and will surely make this a chess-match for Coach Mack and company.
Turning this game into a slightly quicker pace, with opportunities for transition buckets, seemingly favors the Badgers. Less efficient from the field and a dangerous perimeter shooting team, Louisville needs to ensure they continue making teams work the entire possession for scoring opportunities.
The Cardinals have positioned themselves, after 4 games, to be a top-60 defensive team in not only perimeter scoring defense (39th) but also in overall scoring defense (27th). If they can slow Wisconsin down even more than they prefer, they have a fighting chance to pull off the win here.