Texas Tech basketball: How the Red Raiders beat No. 1 Louisville
Louisville didn’t feed its big men enough
Maybe there just aren’t any teams in the game these days that are willing to play through the post on offense. Perhaps today’s players are simply too consumed with the perimeter shot to understand that offense can still start in the paint.
The only time Louisville’s offense had its way with Tech was when the Cardinals went to Steven Enoch or Malik Williams in the post. Those two 6-foot-11 forwards combined for 19 points on 6-10 shooting while getting to the free-throw line a combined 10 times.
On a night when they shot 34% as a team and just 17.6% from 3-point range, why didn’t Louisville go into their two big men, who shot 60% from the field? That is exactly what the Cards should have done when T.J. Holyfield picked up his fourth foul midway through the second half.
Initially, Williams was the focus after Holyfield’s exit as he got the ball down low on back-to-back possessions and it paid off as he came up with three points to cut the Red Raider lead to 48-44. But when Louisville went back to him a third time, he fumbled the ball away and then it seemed like the Cards didn’t think about going back into the post.
Of course, some of that was because of Chris Clarke’s brilliant positional defense. Giving up five inches to Williams and Steven Enoch, the grad transfer was able to use his strength to keep his bigger Cardinal posts from getting right under the bucket and at the same time, he proved capable of using his timing and quickness to jump entry passes and come up with deflections or steals.
That’s the type of unconventional post defense that we are going to need this team to play all season because most teams are going to have a size advantage.
To begin the game, Enoch scored the first four points for either team and it looked like Louisville’s gameplan was to attack Tech inside. But when Holyfield was on the bench for six critical minutes in the second half, the two Cardinal big men got just three touches on the offensive end.
Some credit has to go to Tech’s swarming defense which made life tough on the Louisville bigs but regardless, that’s not smart basketball and it was a huge factor in this Red Raider win.