Sweet Sixteen preview, part II: BruceBall vs. Louisville

Tennessee’s basketball Vols come into the Sweet 16 with a pretty scary matchup ahead of them. As I discussed before, Louisville’s defense is very strong, and will be a very difficult test for a BruceBall offense that has been limping a bit so far in the tournament. So what does this mean in the grand scheme?

Louisville is easily the best and most talented team the Vols have faced so far in the tournament, and they also have a great coach in Rick Pitino. The talking heads seem to favor the Cardinals, and Vegas agrees, setting the line at Louisville by 2 1/2. So what is Louisville bringing?

Who they’ve got:  Louisville is led by 6′11″ senior center David Padgett, who averages 11.4 points and 4.5 rebounds in 23 minutes per game. Many of the Cardinals’ early losses were a direct result of losing Padgett’s services due to injury. Since his return, Louisville has been playing better basketball and has been winning the games they couldn’t earlier in the year. Padgett is the Cardinals’ most efficient offensive player, with an O-rating of 124.0. He shoots an astounding 68% on field goals.

Interestingly, Padgett, at just 11.4 PPG, is Louisville’s leading scorer. The Cardinals’ scoring is extremely balanced, with eight players averaging between 6.4 and 11.4 points. Terrence Williams (96.9 O-rating, 11 PPG, 7.3 RPG), Earl Clark (98.6 O-rating, 10.9 PPG, 8.0 RPG) , and Jerry Smith (114.9 O-rating, 10.5 PPG) are also top scorers for Louisville. Derrick Caracter (100.4 O-rating, 8.5PPG), Edgar Sosa (98.7 O-rating, 7.6 PPG), Andre McGee (113.3 O-rating, 6.4 PPG), and Juan Palacios (102.5 O-rating, 6.4 PPG) are key contributors, and freshman Preston Knowles (118.5 O-rating, 2.4 PPG) is a very efficient option off the bench but does not score much.

Several of these Cardinals are solid perimeter shooters (McGee 40.9%, Smith 36.8%, Sosa 36.4%, Williams 34.2%) and can help Louisville open up the inside for Clark, Caracter, Palacios, and Padgett.

Where Louisville excels: Defensively the Cardinals are strong all around, forcing opponents to a low FG%, grabbing steals, and swatting shots. Offensively the Cards do most of their damage on the interior, shooting 53% on 2-point field goals. They are also reasonably strong from the perimeter, ranking 100th nationally in 3-point FG% at 35.2%. They avoid blocked shots (85th) and steals (37) pretty well.

Where Louisville is vulnerable: Usually I call this “struggling” but at this stage in the competition there’s not a lot of struggling. Offensively Louisville does turn the ball over, ranking 99th in TO rate. Likewise, they don’t force many TOs on defense, ranking 156th. This is interesting considering they are top 40 in both steals and avoiding steals.

They do have a problem at the free throw line in several ways. First, they put opponents at the stripe too often (239th). On their end, they don’t get to the line a lot (100th), and when they get there they don’t hit with a high percentage (64.4%, 304th nationally). They are actually worse at free throws than Tennessee, but you never hear this for some reason.

While the Cardinals are a solid defensive rebounding team (78th) they don’t get many offensive rebounds (148th), so not as many 2nd chance points as you might expect from a team that is strong in the paint.

Gameplan and style: Louisville is deep and can run, though overall their tempo is just average (161st). They will press in the fullcourt to force the opponent to rush in the halfcourt, which is a bit of a philosophical change for Pitino. In the past he has pressed to force more turnovers than UL currently does. Even though they are stronger in the inside, they will take a lot of threes (65th nationally), so perhaps this is an area of weakness that the Vols can exploit; make them shoot contested threes instead of working the paint and perhaps they will be less efficient.

They say pressing teams don’t like to be pressed; I don’t know if this is really true or not, but if it is you can expect a lot of mistakes from both teams, as both like to press. Tennessee has been more mistake prone lately, coughing the ball up too many times in the SEC tournament and against American and Butler. This, coupled with a relatively new PG in J.P. Prince, should be an area of concern for Tennessee going up against a fullcourt press.

Defensively we will lean heavily on Wayne Chism to slow down Padgett, so hopefully he can keep his fouls in check so he can play 30 minutes. Brian Williams is the only Vol that has the height to match Padgett, and will likely draw the assignment when Wayne is resting. This will be a key area of the game to watch. On the perimeter I expect to see the Vols swap defenders often, keeping fresh legs on Louisville’s athletic perimeter players.

I would expect Pitino to dedicate a lot of attention to Chris Lofton.  Depite recent struggles, Lofton is the most dangerous player on the Vol roster and he can explode for 30 if he is not covered up. If he is defended well, the Vols will have to capitalize on a lack of help defense, getting good looks for JaJuan Smith and hopefully some efficient play in the paint. Tyler and Wayne will be key players all-around in this game.

How it will play out: Tough call. Tennessee has not been playing its best basketball the last couple of weeks, but we all know that when the competition is tough, the Vols under Coach Pearl tend to step up their game. Louisville has been playing extremely well, including a blowout of the overseeded Oklahoma Sooners in round 2. It’s easy to assume that Louisville has the momentum, and most would tell you they have a talent and coaching edge as well.

But you can never count out our boys in Big Orange. They are a #2 seed for a reason, and have away from home several times this season to play tough competition and emerged victors. In fact, there are five Sweet Sixteen teams that the Vols played this year (West Virginia, Xavier, Texas, Memphis, Western Kentucky) , none at home– and Tennessee beat four of the five. The ability is there, and Bruce just has to find a way to draw it out. Do that and these Vols will make Tennessee history as the first to advance beyond the Sweet Sixteen to the Elite Eight.

Will that happen? I’ve got a good feeling that Tennessee is going to play one of its best games of the year. It’s just a gut feeling, of course, but Pearl’s teams have tended to step up– big time– when all the world says they are overmatched. They’ve won a lot of games the last three years that they weren’t supposed to, and many seem to feel they shouldn’t win tomorrow. I think they will play well. I think Chris Lofton is finally going to get untracked again, with a new arena to shoot in, and I think Tyler Smith and J.P. Prince are going to play more efficiently than they did with 13 turnovers against Butler. With a real achievement (back-to-back Sweet Sixteens) under their belt, I think the Vols relax a bit and get back to playing their game. They’ll pressure Louisville defensively and get to run a little, and I think their ability to score off of mistakes will be the key to the game. My prediction: Vols 84, Cardinals 81. Welcome to the Elite Eight.