I'm a Louisville fan, here's our scouting report, ask me anything...

[SHOXAAC]

What makes your defense so strong? What scheme(s) do you run? I read the stats and was curious about your defensive style, because I didn't really pick up on anything significant in the OSU game, but it was effective in stopping them enough, and they missed an awful lot of open shots. We credit missed open shots to tired legs from dealing with our pressure, but I haven't seen you guys press much during the tourney, yet I've been impressed with your defensive FG% overall.

MTXE!
PLAY ANGRY!!
NOT SATISFIED!!!

[calfan]

I have some questions that I think help explain how I feel today. I have three question for the Louisville fans.

1. I heard your women's team played Baylor last weekend, what happened?
2. How many experts predicted your win?
3. WSU beat Gonzaga and the "experts" said they were overrated. Georgetown lost in the first round to FGCU.
Why didn't the "experts" talk about them being overrated?

[CBB_Fan]

In response to the question on TOs:

Very rarely do you see one of our players stripped. Usually we make good passes when we are breaking a press as well. However, we do have a tendency to turn the ball over in two ways. First, we often lose the ball in post feeds, which is often more the fault of the post player than the passer (specifically, Orukpe cannot catch passes that travel faster than he can run). Secondly, as we already have mentioned we tend to draw a fair number of offensive fouls.

Our league plays a very uniform style of basketball. It emphasizes intellect over speed, flopping over standing your ground, and mostly relies on having smart senior leaders that can shoot the ball. Basically, every team tries to play like the UNI team that beat KU in the second round. That is, every team except us. We focus more on traditional power team traits like rebounding and scoring in the paint. Anyway, the way our league plays makes it very hard for an athletic guard to take advantage of a slower defender without drawing a lot of fouls.

[C0|dB|00ded]

We did have a player early in Pitino's tenure (2003, IIRC) who was accused of check fraud and was kicked off the team after being arrested. We're a program who is treated as the little brother of UK, our fan base takes pride in the quality of our players, and seeing the thugs that John Calipari puts out (DeMarcus Cousins is a great example) makes us that much more proud of the team this year (similar to you and KU), and we saw a lot about the team character through the injury to Ware.

Also, our teams pride themselves on getting work done in the classroom. We just posted a team GPA of 3.41 in the Fall semester with 15 of 17 players making over a 3.0. Peyton Siva leads a bible study group on campus, and we just have very few egos to deal with, which is very refreshing. The only 'ego' on the team is Chane Behanan, and with him being Ware's best friend on the team, I'd imagine he'd be a little more focused on the team now, since he was the one wearing the #5 jersey at the end of the Duke game.

Many people disliked the characters Pitino recruited at Kentucky, but I think he's also grown from the Sypher incident, and the quality of his recruits has been basketball AND character focused much more than in previous years. Terrence Williams (playing for the Celtics) was the biggest head case, and likely the reason we lost in the E8 in 2009.

I'm glad to hear that your program prides itself on keeping its nose clean and is a step ahead of Kentucky on those areas. It does appear after some light Googling that you had some fellas by the name of Jerry Smith and Terence Jennings who got a little unruly and had to be tased by the police and locked up a few years ago. Coach Pitino said he would handle the issue internally. It appears they never lost any playing time. Do you remember what happened in this deal? http://www.sbnation.com/2009/10/12/1...arrested-tased


T


...:cool:

[CBB_Fan]

What makes your defense so strong? What scheme(s) do you run? I read the stats and was curious about your defensive style, because I didn't really pick up on anything significant in the OSU game, but it was effective in stopping them enough, and they missed an awful lot of open shots. We credit missed open shots to tired legs from dealing with our pressure, but I haven't seen you guys press much during the tourney, yet I've been impressed with your defensive FG% overall.

Marshall tends to be a defensive schemer. He doesn't rely on pressure, on stifling on ball defense, or on a lot of help. But he does incorporate all of those things, and has been very successful at changing the defense to attack the weaknesses of our opponents offense. We use a little bit of everything to confuse opponents and keep them from getting set against us. In general, we do a few things pretty well:

1. Deny guard penetration by hedging big men on screens. This means that we sometimes give up easy baskets if our big men cannot return to their men fast enough.
2. Turn opponents over in the half-court. We don't usually use the press to try and make people turn the ball over, but our guards still manage to find ways to get steals without sacrificing easy lay-ins in the half-court.
3. Block shots. Our 6'8 PF has blocked more shots than player left in the tournament, and our 7'0 C has the best block% of any player left (in limited minutes). Early and Baker also get a block or two a game. This simply takes away points for our opponents.
4. Stop teams from getting second chance opportunities by rebounding. Outside of the Gonzaga game, we VERY rarely give up many offensive rebounds.
5. Force bad shooters to take difficult shots. If we know a player likes to shoot but isn't efficient, we'll play off them and force him to try and make difficult shots. This is what we did to Aaron Craft and what we'll try to do to Siva and Smith.

[Cdizzle]

What makes your defense so strong? What scheme(s) do you run? I read the stats and was curious about your defensive style, because I didn't really pick up on anything significant in the OSU game, but it was effective in stopping them enough, and they missed an awful lot of open shots. We credit missed open shots to tired legs from dealing with our pressure, but I haven't seen you guys press much during the tourney, yet I've been impressed with your defensive FG% overall.

The defense is primarily man, though we often drop into a 1-1-3 zone after pressing. Essentially, there is nothing gimmicky about the defense. Each individual is just solid, and knows he has good help behind him. Things rarely go uncontested at the rim, and we rarely give up easy put-backs that can really raise a FG%.

Two things heard in every tournament postgame:

1. They were faster and stronger than we thought.
2. We missed a lot of open shots (or layups).

Pretty sure #1 has a lot to do with #2. Or we are the luckiest team in America.

[deep3card]

I have some questions that I think help explain how I feel today. I have three question for the Louisville fans.

1. I heard your women's team played Baylor last weekend, what happened?
2. How many experts predicted your win?
3. WSU beat Gonzaga and the "experts" said they were overrated. Georgetown lost in the first round to FGCU.
Why didn't the "experts" talk about them being overrated?

Our women's coach actually devised a plan to reduce the impact of Griner, and we beat the team that won it all last year and was the heavy favorite to do it again. Gonzaga was a paper tiger all season, and played the weakest schedule of any #1 team in the country ever. Georgetown losing in the first round was a true surprise, as they had a much more impressive resume than Gonzaga (only strange loss was to USF, and many more quality wins, including beating us once and Syracuse twice, you know, 2 of this year's FF teams) Gonzaga, on the other hand, went 1-2 against ranked teams during the season, and only 1 of those teams ended up being ranked at the end of the season. Like I said, paper tiger. G-town's loss was a fluke, perhaps FGCU would beat them 3 out of 10 times, and I wouldn't doubt G-town overlooked them because they were completely unknown prior to the start of the tourney.

Beating Ohio State was your most impressive tourney win, not the Gonzaga game.

[Cdizzle]

Our women's coach actually devised a plan to reduce the impact of Griner, and we beat the team that won it all last year and was the heavy favorite to do it again. Gonzaga was a paper tiger all season, and played the weakest schedule of any #1 team in the country ever. Georgetown losing in the first round was a true surprise, as they had a much more impressive resume than Gonzaga (only strange loss was to USF, and many more quality wins, including beating us once and Syracuse twice, you know, 2 of this year's FF teams) Gonzaga, on the other hand, went 1-2 against ranked teams during the season, and only 1 of those teams ended up being ranked at the end of the season. Like I said, paper tiger. G-town's loss was a fluke, perhaps FGCU would beat them 3 out of 10 times, and I wouldn't doubt G-town overlooked them because they were completely unknown prior to the start of the tourney.

Beating Ohio State was your most impressive tourney win, not the Gonzaga game.

Gonzaga was a better team than OSU, by far. Here's the BigEast mentality we know and love.

[adcorbett]

Hello Shockers Fans,

Another Cards fan here. I was just perusing the board here. Normally I make it not a point to post on other teams’ boards, because it usually comes off poor like someone is talking trash, bragging, etc. But it’s Final Four time, and it will be a blast. Fi rst I wanted to say glad to see you guys make it. Always nice when a former conference mate joins the party. And does it in style too, by beating a one and two seed. Much respect. Anyway, I saw you guys asking a question that was not answered regarding how to beat Louisville. First let me say that I missed most of your games while attending the UofL games, so I can only speak for what I know about Louisville, and very limited in my knowledge of what you guys do well. This is important to note because it plays into what I am saying below:

You asked how to beat Louisville’s defense?

The easy answer is you can’t. Louisville’s defense will impose it’s will on you. Not much you can do about it in terms of it will force you to speed up, and play out of character. It does not mean you cannot score, because you can, but the defense still did what it wanted you to do: take you out of your game. The best answer as to how to beat get open shots is to use our strengths against us. The defense is super aggressive to a relentless degree. Not just in the press, but in the half court matchup zone. They are aggressive, fearless, and the players purely look to snatch the ball out of your hands, jump the passing lanes, or make you go where you don’t want to go. This is done with double teams, triple teams, and sometimes quadruple teams. However, if you get rid of the ball, someone will have WIDE open shots. That is why teams shoot a fairly good three point percentage against us: when you gamble for a steal and miss, the defense rotates to recover, and if you move the ball around, there will be an open player in the wing for three, or in the low block for an easy shot. That is how you beat it.

The best way to beat Louisville’s: YOUR defense has to win it for you. Shut down Louisville’s offense, and Louisville can’t press. No press, and the half court defense is not as effective. If that happens, you can get back into your game. If you can’t stop Louisville from scoring, their defense will win one way or another.

The Scouting Report

The defense Pitino throws out there will play mind games with your guards. I have seen the comparison to VCU, and I have to say the two are not comparable. VCU runs a very good and aggressive press. But their half -court defense needs some work, and if you put a big man in the middle to direct traffic, you can get it up court with good success. With Louisville, the press is just an appetizer. They use the press to set up the half -court defense. The half- court defense is what you have to fear.
Louisville runs 7 different presses at you; two man to man presses, three trapping presses, and two zone presses. They often switch them up possession to possession, each with a different goal in mind. The zone press purely is a warm up to slow you down and disrupt your half -court offense. The man to man presses are designed to make you eat clock to get it over the time line, and set you up for a trap as soon as you cross half court. The trapping presses force you into a corner and make you dribble it out of bounds, throw an ill-advised pass, eat a ten second violation, or call a time out. These presses do their share of damage as it always draws at least two five second counts (or forced timeouts), one ten second call, 2-3 steals per game, and 2 dead ball turnovers. The traps also force your bigs to be ball handlers, which creates multiple opportunities for disaster as most bigs can’t handle the ball, and our bigs are good one on one defenders and get a lot of steals themselves, and are always good for another 1-2 “unforced” TO’s per game.

But that is only affecting 8 or 9 possessions per game out of 60: good for free points, but it’s not what does the damage. The problem is it takes you 8 seconds to get the ball over half court nearly every trip. Then your ball handlers get trapped about ten feet behind the three point line, and you have other guards that have to come up to help you out of traps. A few TO’s will happen here as well. Then they have to move the ball away from the help defender, and before you know it there are ten seconds on the shot clock, and you are not even in your offense. This gets very trying, and forces you into shots you don’t want to take.
As the game goes on, your guards start having issues. They’ve spent the entire game looking over their shoulders, reading the zone, finding the open man, fighting off one or two on ball defenders, racing to get over the time line, fighting off traps, fighting off double teams, trying to read the defense, looking for the open man, finding a passing lane, running the offense, looking for a shot, defending the break off turnovers, defending the break on missed shots, setting up a defense in transition, and all while being frustrated for not getting the shots they want. The defense starts playing mind games on your players, as they start seeing defenders who are not there, and rushing whether they need to or not.
Then they have to guard Peyton Siva and Russ Smith on defense. Both are lightening quick in the open court, and hard to stay in front of. Actually very hard to stay in front of. Neither are great shooters, but they relentlessly attack the paint. Earlier in the year, people were able to keep them out, by having the bigs block the driving lane, but both are now very adept at finding the open person, something that was not happening earlier in the year. Also Dieng has become lights out from 15-18 feet, making the pick and pop a deadly combination. We also keep the Four under the basket when running the pick and pop or pick and roll, giving the driver two options, one high and one low, plus two on the wing for an outlet.
Now this obviously does not mean Louisville is unbeatable. It’s just that unless you completely shut down Louisville’s offense, their defense will beat you one way (turnovers) or another (loss of patience).

So, how would Louisville beat Wichita St? Knowing what you see here?

[C0|dB|00ded]

Holy Carp!


T


...:cool:

[deep3card]

I'm glad to hear that your program prides itself on keeping its nose clean and is a step ahead of Kentucky on those areas. It does appear after some light Googling that you had some fellas by the name of Jerry Smith and Terence Jennings who got a little unruly and had to be tased by the police and locked up a few years ago. Coach Pitino said he would handle the issue internally. It appears they never lost any playing time. Do you remember what happened in this deal? http://www.sbnation.com/2009/10/12/1...arrested-tased


T


...:cool:

Nice bait attempt. As I said, after the Sypher incident, the quality of recruits increased ten-fold, and I honestly didn't even recall the issue you posted. You're speaking of an off-season misdemeanor incident. Would you like to win the morale award for this game? Congrats, here's your participation trophy.

[deep3card]

Gonzaga was a better team than OSU, by far. Here's the BigEast mentality we know and love.

Based on what? Wins against unranked teams? The only B1G team Gonzaga played was Illinois, and they got beat by 9.

[WstateU]

So, how would Louisville beat Wichita St? Knowing what you see here?

I say we give up...

[C0|dB|00ded]

Our women's coach actually devised a plan to reduce the impact of Griner, and we beat the team that won it all last year and was the heavy favorite to do it again. Gonzaga was a paper tiger all season, and played the weakest schedule of any #1 team in the country ever. Georgetown losing in the first round was a true surprise, as they had a much more impressive resume than Gonzaga (only strange loss was to USF, and many more quality wins, including beating us once and Syracuse twice, you know, 2 of this year's FF teams) Gonzaga, on the other hand, went 1-2 against ranked teams during the season, and only 1 of those teams ended up being ranked at the end of the season. Like I said, paper tiger. G-town's loss was a fluke, perhaps FGCU would beat them 3 out of 10 times, and I wouldn't doubt G-town overlooked them because they were completely unknown prior to the start of the tourney.

Beating Ohio State was your most impressive tourney win, not the Gonzaga game.

Had Cle' Early not gone out with a possible achilles tear when we were up by 20 in the second half against TOSU, we would have totally blew them out. Gonzaga was by far our greatest test of the tournament and it took unconscious 3-point shooting towards the end of the game to barely beat them.


T


...:cool:

[SubGod22]

Based on what? Wins against unranked teams? The only B1G team Gonzaga played was Illinois, and they got beat by 9.

Based on personal experience.