Pitt Hoops Game Preview: Pitt at #1 Louisville
It is not hyperbole to say that this is Pitt’s biggest game of 2019. In fact, it is not hyperbole to say that this is Pitt’s biggest game of the Jeff Capel era. A win tonight could, in fact, make this the biggest win in the history of Pitt basketball.
That’s because the Pitt Panthers men’s basketball team has not beaten a top-ranked team in the country since Feb. 16, 2009 over no. 1 Connecticut. As they noted on the Pitt men’s basketball Instagram account, today is the day that opportunity comes a-knocking:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5vXjzSBKAQ/
When this kind of opportunity comes to your door, you have a chance to do something special. Pitt is a 14.5 point underdog heading into tonight’s matchup, and rightfully so. This is a fantastic Louisville team, and it very well may be the best team in the ACC, to say nothing of the entire college basketball nation.
Winning tonight would give Capel’s squad a signature win for 2019, and for the #ZooEra as a whole. Winning tonight would surely result in Pitt being ranked come the next AP poll, and would bring Pitt back to the stage of national prominence with a resounding bang.
The odds say that Pitt is likely to lose tonight, and that very well may be the ultimate outcome. Pitt will have to play a perfect game to have a chance in this win, in addition to hoping for an off-night from the top-ranked Cardinals. Let’s dive deeper into tonight’s matchup to
Fast Facts
- Going back to 2011, Pitt is 1-13 against Louisville. The only win came last season on Jan. 9, 2019 as Pitt held on to beat the Cardinals 89-86 in overtime.
- During this one-sided span dating back to 2011, Pitt is 0-11 against ranked Louisville teams. That includes a 55-point home loss against Louisville during the 2017 campaign, as Pitt lost 106-51 at the Pete.
- Louisville enters tonight’s game with a perfect 8-0 record, and they enter tonight’s contest off of a 58-43 win over no. 4 Michigan as part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
- Head coach Chris Mack is in his second season with the Cardinals, after serving as the head coach of Xavier for nine seasons. In those nine years, Mack led Xavier to the NCAA tournament eight times with two top-10 finishes. Last season in his first year with Louisville, Mack led the Cardinals to a 20-14 season and NCAA tournament appearance.
- Louisville is currently ranked no. 1 in the KenPom rankings, while Pitt sits at no. 71 in the ranking system.
Louisville Preview
Mack’s Louisville team has a rotation that runs about eight deep, with five players who are former top-100 recruiting prospects. The squad is led by junior Jordan Nwora, who enters play with 21.9 points and 7.5 rebounds per game this year. Get used to hearing Nwora’s name, because not only will he be tough for Pitt to stop, he’s going to be a player of significant national prominence this season. In addition to being a great rebounder, the 6-foot-7 forward is also shooting an excellent .467 from beyond the arc this year on 5.6 three-point attempts per game.
Beyond Nwora, look for Steven Enoch to cause Pitt some matchup issues tonight. The senior center stands tall at 6-foot-10, and is averaging 11.1 points and 8.1 rebounds per game early on for the Cardinals. The Cardinals are also collecting 8.8 rebounds per game from forward Dwayne Sutton. While Eric Hamilton has been playing extremely well lately, it remains to be seen how the combination of Hamilton, Terrell Brown, Justin Champagnie, and Au’Diese Toney can clean up the boards tonight for Pitt.
Overall, Louisville has four scorers averaging more than 10 points per game–Nwora, Enoch, Sutton, and guard Ryan McMahon. Louisville is ranked no. 33 in the country in two-point field goal percentage at .564, and no. 35 in the country in three-point field goal percentage at .386. No matter how you slice it, Louisville is a team that will eat you alive if you give them open looks.
Defensively, Louisville is also lethal, allowing just 59.0 points per game, good for no. 20 in the country. They are allowing just a .275 three-point field goal percentage to opponents, which is also good for no. 33 in the country. They have allowed fewer than nine assists per game so far in the early going, and have forced 17 more turnovers than they have allowed in assists (86 to 69).
Game Preview
As I said earlier in this post, Pitt is going to have to play just about a perfect game to have a shot to win tonight. Singling out specific goals may not seem to make the most sense given how well they’ll need to play in all facets of the game, but there are some areas of focus that stick out.
So what does Pitt need to do to beat no. 1 Louisville on the road tonight? Here are the Keys to the game.
Pitt must limit Jordan Nwora as much as possible.
This one goes without saying, as you need to limit the best player on your opponent’s team every single game. But that rings doubly true when you’re facing off against one of the best players in the nation. But the numbers really do bear this idea out–in Louisville’s closest game of the season, a six-point win over Akron, Nwora was held to just six field goals out of 19 attempts.
He still managed to finish with 18 points and eight rebounds in his 30 minutes against Akron, and the Cardinals won. But Akron is ranked no. 96 in the KenPom rankings and only narrowly lost to Louisville because they limited the player who takes nearly one third of Louisville’s field goal attempts.
Any time you can stop someone who takes 28 percent of his team’s shots, you’re going to be in decent shape. I will be curious to see who gets the primary duty of guarding Nwora tonight, but I suspect it will be some combination of Champagnie and Toney tonight, who have both shown themselves to be stout wing defenders. If they can combine to keep Nwora from dominating offensively–a big if–Pitt may be able to keep this one close.
Pitt has to avoid settling for three pointers early in the shot clock.
This one writes itself. Pitt is an awful three-point shooting team. Their .259 three-point field goal percentage is ranked no. 342 in the country. You read that correctly–Pitt is no. 342 nationally in three-point shooting.
Conversely, Louisville is no. 33 defensively in limiting three pointers. They allow just a .275 shooting percentage from beyond the arc. So the strategy for Pitt should be clear, right?
Obviously, the Panthers are going to take three pointers. In modern basketball, it’s hard to imagine a college basketball team playing a full game without taking at least a dozen or so triples. But Pitt absolutely needs to make sure that the threes that they take are relatively open looks.
All season, there have been several possessions in each game where Pitt has settled for contested or semi-contested deep three looks early in the shot clock. Those are extremely low-percentage looks for a team that is already rough from beyond the arc. Against a Louisville team that defends as successfully as they do and scores with as much efficiency as they do, Pitt can’t afford to come away with empty possessions by taking low-percentage shots.
Just as they need to limit Nwora offensively, they need to maximize their own offensive effectiveness by moving the ball to find open looks and not settling for low-percentage or contested shots. Pitt’s ability to find success against a good defense will be on full display tonight. That starts with protecting the basketball, and once again, that starts with Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens.
Pitt needs to hit their free throws and keep Louisville away from the free throw line.
Louisville is a decent free-throw shooting team, at 73.3 percent. That ranks no. 82 in the country, which is in the top quarter of the country. Naturally then, Pitt will want to limit Louisville’s attempts at the free throw line.
But even more than that, Pitt has played its best basketball of the season when they’ve been able to get to the free throw line more than they’ve allowed their opponents to take freebies. Crucial to the Panthers’ win over Florida State? Pitt got to the free throw line a whopping 31 times while holding the Seminoles to just 15 attempts. Pitt made 22 free throws, seven more than Florida State even attempted. Pitt won that game by two points.
Pitt also outshot Robert Morris (27 attempts to six attempts), Monmouth (26 to eight), and Kansas State (21 to 13) from the free throw stripe by large margins. Each of those games were wins. In fact, both of Pitt’s losses have in some sense come down to poor free-throw shooting.
Pitt made just 10 of 18 attempts against Nicholls State in a five-point loss. In their 15-point loss to West Virginia, Pitt made 19 free throws. Pretty good, right? Sure, but they took a massive 32 attempts. If they make five or six more of those, it’s automatically a much closer game. So in both of their losses this season, Pitt has shot under 60 percent from the free throw line. That’s a trend they need to reverse.
Pitt has had multiple games this season where they’ve played more than 10 minutes of the first half in the bonus, while limiting their opponent to just a few minutes in the bonus. Florida State was one of those games, and it resulted in Pitt doubling Florida State’s free throw output, leading them to their marquee win of the early season. They’ll need to replicate that to have a shot against the top team in the country on the road.
The game tips off tonight at 9 p.m. from Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center. The game will be broadcast on the ACC Network. Follow along on Twitter @PittHoops for live game coverage.
