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UofL basketball roster outlook

Morgantow: you nailed it! Folks can call it an alibi or an excuse, but it is true that 3 pauses adversely affected the performance of the 2020-21 UL team. This roster may or may not end up meeting expectations, but I see this as one of the most promising rosters since 2013 in terms of experience and depth. We could easily go 10 deep if we remain healthy.
 
Weren't the pauses 6 weeks in total, in the middle of a season? I remember sports talk talking about one particular practice where they had one player and one coach on each end of the court, staying far apart. Mostly they couldn't practice at all during that time. Maybe you can get away with that when you're super talented at the high school level but not at Division 1 level basketball. It's just crazy.

I've said it before and I'm NOT an excuse guy - but yes COVID affected everyone but it didn't affect everyone equally. Last year was one big anomaly for all sports, and football felt like a long exhibition season on the brink of cancellation at any second. Truthfully it was hard to care about. The season didn't feel real to me until the conference playoffs in football and March Madness in basketball.
 
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We have solid depth. We've got some good size and talent. Some good returning players.

I just have pause about our backcourt. They've never played together and I feel like there's a definite ceiling on their ability to take over games.

But overall, it's a solid roster. If Malik plays like a first team ALL-ACC player and Sam breaks out and shows the NBA potential he has, those are great pieces we can build around.
 
FWIW,

Louisville is a 7 seed on the 7/13 Lunardi Bracketology. This is probably the highest I've seen them on these preseason hot takes.

In just about any ACC preseason poll they are going to be parked behind Duke/UNC/FSU/UVA no doubt. There are then other teams like Va Tech and Syracuse getting a little more buzz maybe.

It's an opportunity for Mack to make this a "go get" respect season, but the guys gotta do it he can only do so much. I like the depth last year they couldn't practice and they played 6 or 7 guys, so the key guys wore down and they were never getting those surprise boosts out of a bench because there was no bench.

They were also atrocious from the 3 pt line, one of the worst in the country. Mack has addressed that need in the off-season.

They have a lot of good players, but do they have any stars? Who is going to make the plays in close games down the stretch?

Post season games are won by guard play mostly, how will the UofL guards stack compared to other programs? Will the cards get to post season? And will the NCAA drop some hammer out of the clouds during the year not sure what the timeline is on all that.
 
I’m hoping for Williams to be healthy, and for Wiznitzer to improve, and Curry to be a beast. That would give us an awesome center position. I’m hoping that Withers, JJ and Sam all have break out years, giving us awesome wings. Finally, I’m hoping the new guards, and the new offensive scheme, give us a very fast paced and explosive scoring punch. That’s a lot of hoping, but it could add up to a pretty special year. Hoping.
 
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