It’s the Cards and the Cats in the Battle of the Bluegrass.
Louisville Cardinals (6-4, 0-1) at Kentucky Wildcats (9-1, 0-0)
Battle of the Bluegrass
Game Time: 5:15 p.m.
Location: Rupp Arena: Lexington, Ky.
Television: ESPN
Announcers: Dan Shulman (play-by-play) and Jay Bilas (analyst)
Officials: Ron Groover, A.J. Desai, Trey Styons
Favorite: Kentucky by 12
Series: Kentucky leads, 39-17
Last Meeting: Kentucky won 95-76 on Dec. 21, 2023 in Louisville
About Kentucky:
The Mark Pope era at Kentucky is off to a rousing start with the Wildcats sitting at 9-1, their best record after 10 games since the 2017-18 season. Included in that win total are signature victories over Duke on a neutral floor and Gonzaga in a de facto road game.
UK enters Saturday as the highest scoring team in college basketball, averaging 91.1 points per contest. They’ve broken the 100-point threshold in four of their 10 games, all contests they won by 28 points or more.
Pope’s primary philosophies both on offense and defense are extremely similar to Pat Kelsey’s. So why, you might be wondering, is Kentucky where Kentucky is and Louisville is where Louisville is.
Outside of the obvious answer about injuries, there are two primary differences between the Wildcats and the Cardinals that have resulted in UK being ranked in the nation’s top 10 and U of L being 6-4.
1. Makin’ shots
Kentucky doesn’t hoist threes at the rate Louisville does, but they make a lot more of them. While the Cards are shooting 27.0 percent as a team from beyond the arc, UK is hitting at nearly a 36 percent clip from deep.
While they have come back down to Earth a bit over the last three games, Pope’s roster is still loaded with guys that must be marked on the perimeter, none more so than Koby Brea. Arguably the best pure shooter in college basketball, Brea is shooting a career-best 56.1 percent from deep entering Saturday. In all, six Kentucky players are shooting 33 percent or better from three.
2. Kentucky has a pair of very effective inside presences.
Andrew Carr is the more offensive-minded of the two. The Wake Forest transfer is a versatile scorer who isn’t afraid to launch from the outside. He knocked down three triples and scored 18 points in Wake’s rout of Louisville last season.
Amari Williams is the biggest reason Kentucky is both one of the best defensive rebounding teams on Louisville’s schedule, and one of the best at defending the three. His status as an elite rim protector allows the Wildcat defense to overextend and force nearly every shot from the outside to be heavily contested. Williams is also a glass cleaner who should limit second chance opportunities, which is an area where U of L has thrived so far this season.
A big question mark coming into this game is the status of Kentucky point guard Lamont Butler. The San Diego State transfer injured his ankle in the team’s loss to Clemson, and did not play in the wins over Gonzaga and Colgate. In addition to being one of the better on-ball defenders in college basketball, Butler is UK’s leader in assists (3.9 apg), and somewhat surprisingly, its second leading scorer (12.9 ppg).
While Butler’s status for Saturday night is up in the air, the status of his backup is not. Arizona transfer Kerr Krissa suffered a foot fracture in the team’s overtime win over Gonzaga and is expected to be out for the next 3-6 weeks.
While Kentucky’s injury issues aren’t as deep-seeded as Louisville’s, they are certainly a different team without both of their primary ballhandlers. I’d expect that we won’t know more on Butler’s status until close to tip-off.
Leading scorer Otega Oweh and third leading scorer Jaxson Robinson are UK’s most well-rounded offensive players. Oweh hasn’t been held to single digits in scoring in a game so far this season, and Robinson is the Wildcat not named Koby Brea who’s most likely to go nuts from the outside.
As far as Kentucky’s defense is concerned, the good news is that they don’t force many turnovers. For a shorthanded Cardinal team with one consistently reliable ballhandler, that’s a blessing. The bad news is they are the seventh-best team in the country at defending the three. Of course UTEP was 349th in three-point defense heading into Wednesday night and Louisville still went 6-of-34, so maybe it doesn’t really matter all that much.
As expected, Pope has UK playing at a breakneck pace (22nd-fastest in the country). Louisville has slowed things down a touch since the season-ending injuries to Pryor and Johnson, and remaining under control despite the crowd noice and the Wildcats trying to play a million possession game will be critical if the Cards want to have any shot at pulling an upset.
To sum up: They are very good. We’ve gotta make some shots.
Notable:
—Louisville and Kentucky are meeting before Christmas for the second consecutive year, but just the third time since 2008. The teams have split their pre-Christmas meetings over that span.
—Louisville is 98-88 all-time against members of the SEC, but 0-3 against SEC opponents so far this season.
—Kentucky leads the nation in scoring at 91.1 points per game. The Wildcats have scored 100 or more points in four of their 10 games.
—UK is averaging 19.1 assists per game, the most of any team in the SEC and the 11th-most in Division-I.
—Kentucky is averaging 10.2 made three-pointers per game, food for 30th-best in the country.
—Louisville has lost nine consecutive non-home games against Kentucky.
—Louisville hasn’t beaten Kentucky inside Rupp Arena since Jan. 5, 2008.
—Louisville is 5-21 all-time in games against Kentucky played in Lexington.
—Kentucky ranks third in the country in rebounds per game with an average of 44.8.
—Favorites have failed to cover the spread in 10 of the last 15 meetings between these two teams.
—Louisville players Noah Watterman and Aly Khalifa both played for Kentucky head coach Mark Pope last season at BYU.
—The team that has won the battle of the shooting percentages has won 14 of the last 16 games in this series.
—Kentucky hasn’t beaten a non-Kenny Payne coached Louisville team since before COVID.
—At 9-1, Kentucky is off to its best start since the 2017-18 season.
—Louisville head coach Pat Kelsey is 0-1 in games against Kentucky. Kelsey’s Winthrop team lost inside Rupp Arena, 87-74, on Nov. 21, 2018.
—Kentucky head coach Mark Pope beat Louisville just once during his career as a player at UK. He scored nine points and grabbed 10 rebounds in an 88-86 loss to the Cards on Jan. 1, 1995. He has not faced Louisville as a head coach.
—Louisville is 1-3 against AP top 25 teams so far this season. All four of U of L’s losses are to teams now in the top 20 in the AP Poll: No. 1 Tennessee, No. 4 Duke, No. 13 Oklahoma and No. 19 Ole Miss. Kentucky is currently No. 5 in the AP poll.
—Kentucky has won or tied the rebounding in all but one of its games this season.
—Louisville’s schedule to date ranks as the 8th-toughest in the country according to the NET Rankings.
—Louisville has a 257-82 record against non-conference opponents over the last 23 seasons (includes postseason).
—Louisville is 14-0 over the past 10 seasons when limiting opponents to no more than one three-point field goal.
—Since 2004, Louisville is 130-0 when leading by more than 10 points at halftime.
—Louisville is 115-0 all-time when scoring 100 or more points in non-overtime games.
—Louisville has won 163 consecutive games when holding an opponent under 50 points.
Ken Pomeroy Prediction: Kentucky 83, Louisville 72
