The Cardinals had prolonged stretches of poor basketball in their exhibition opener against the Falcons.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Year two of the Kenny Payne era of the Louisville men's basketball program certainly had a better start than year one did.
“I thought that game was one that we could build on, a game that we needed to identify and evaluate what guys can comprehend which concepts," Payne said."But at the end of the day, I needed to know who I can count on to fight. Who can I count on to be disciplined? Who can I count on to know the plays and execute? That was, for me, the disappointing thing."
The main culprit here was something that plagued Louisville all last season: turnovers. They committed a whopping 22 of them by the game's final horn, and they were extremely prevalent in their negative segments of play. The Cardinals turned the ball over on their first three possessions of each half, and committed 12 of them in the first 12 minutes of the game alone.
On top of the carelessness with the turnovers, Payne was critical of their overall focus, which was very evident at times. During their negative stretches, there was hardly any sort of flow or decisiveness out of Louisville on either end of the court. The directly led to Simmons - despite being vastly out-matched in terms of speed physicality - to score 20 points off turnovers and 30 points in the paint.
But, it wasn't all bad for Louisville. They ended the first half on a 24-1 run where they essentially completely shut down Simmons on both ends of the floor. They also outscored the Falcons 39-19 in the final 15 minutes of the game. Both times, the offensive attack seems much more cohesive, and their defense efforts were way more decisive.
Payne's reasoning for this was that he is still evaluating each player and what he can get out of them. It was crucial for him to see what each player was capable of against an actual opponent.
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