Quote:
Originally Posted by joshnky
Where do you think this Louisville team would have been ranked last November?
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8th or 9th, IMO.
They can't shoot at all. Worse, there's no one on the roster who even looks like a shooter at this point. At this point in last season, UNC and Kentucky own talent that looked far superior. Syracuse was rounding into the third team in the talent troika, while OSU as good as anyone in the country. Baylor looked really tough, with both shooters and length. UConn was long, had shooters, could play suffocating D, and had a game-changing center who'd just signed an LOI. Vandy had three outstanding seniors who were all NBA-ready. Duke had the best freshman in the country, a great supporting cast, and Coach K. Florida had Brad Beal, two great SEC guards already, and another guard who'd shown flashes of stardom at a smaller school, not to mention a stud inside and a streaky matchup nightmare.
This year's Louisville team has Peyton Siva, who's always been inconsistent. He's Tyshawn Taylor without the extra gear.
They have an undersized power forward, who needs to play with a full-out motor and be that bell cow if their team has any chance of outscoring you.
They have a defense-first center, who's developing offensive game holds promise, but is still inconsistent. (There's a trend here.)
Russ Smith is mercurial; he's never met a shot he didn't like.
The others are okay; Blackshear looks like an athlete, but can't shoot. Neither can Ware.
Aside from the shooting, they remind me of last year's Kansas team. But that shooting may mean an upset a round or three earlier than expected. What many NCAA teams have discovered over the past 20 years or so is that your team has to be good at both offense and defense. Shooting percentages matter.