The Louisville Cardinals have to play nice after a scandalous summer cost longtime coach Rick Pitino his job and put the program under a microscope. And playing nice has the team in the middle of the pack in the ACC. The Cardinals lost at home to Syracuse on Monday, dropping three straight games for the first time since the 2012-13 season. Louisville won the national championship that year, but they’ll need to play much better to beat the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets on Thursday.
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Tech is coming off another road loss, the latest in overtime at Boston College to drop the Jackets to 1-6 SU and 2-5 away from home. They’ve lost their last three road games going 0-3 ATS and the Jackets’ only road victory this season came against the conference punching bag Pitt. Tech has taken a step back in Josh Pastner’s second season and will need to perform better on the road if they want to reach the 20-win mark again.
As the Louisville program transitions away from the Pitino era, there were expected to be some bumps along the way. And there certainly have been. While the Cards have a decent overall record at 16-8, they’ve lost three straight games for the first time in five seasons and two-straight league games at home, something the Cards haven’t done in a longer time.
Key Stat
6.7 – Leb by Anas Mahmoud, who averages over three blocked shots per game, the Cardinals are second in the nation with 6.7 blocks per contest. Their ability to protect the rim has led to one of the best field goal percentage defenses in college basketball and forces teams to alter their game plan.
The Cards are 21st in field goal percentage defense and among the top-50 in three-point defense, and when they hold opponents to fewer than 40 percent from the floor, they’ve had plenty of success.
Mahmoud ranks sixth in the country with 3.17 blocks per game and Ray Spalding is among the top-50 shot blockers with nearly 2.0 per outing. Tech will likely have to move to the perimeter to score and they shoot threes at just a 36.1 percent clip.
Injury Report
The Jackets shut down Curtis Haywood last week due to a leg injury, depleting an already thin lineup. Haywood played in 15 games with seven starts, but missed time in December with a shin problem. He averaged only 5.3 points in those games, but he played nearly 25 important minutes per contest.
With Haywood on the shelf, Tech used just six players in a win over Syracuse and had seven see time in Sunday’s loss to BC. The shortened bench will cause problems against Louisville’s athletic squad that has four bench players who average more than 12 minutes per contest.
Free College Basketball ATS Picks
This is a down year for Louisville compared to what most fans were used to under Pitino, The NCAA Tournament is a longshot now that they’ve lost three straight games and are just one game over .500 in the ACC standings.
But make no mistake, this is still a quality team, and the Cards are better than Tech. That doesn’t guarantee a victory, however, and the Cards have stumbled on the defensive end of the floor. Their opponents have shot better than 45 percent from the field in each of the last four games with the final three ending up in defeats.
Tech doesn’t score a lot, which plays right into Louisville’s strength. And the Jackets have been awful away from home. Things don’t get much easier with a contest against an angry and hungry Louisville club.
College Basketball Odds: Louisville 75, Georgia Tech 67
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