Louisville Proves It's Among CBB's Elite with Dominant Defense vs. Kentucky

This college basketball season is already one of the best ever. Consider that hyperbole if you’d like, but the blue bloods are all talented, they all score the ball and play fast and it’s so ridiculously fun to watch.  

Then there’s Louisville.

The Cardinals belong in an elite tier that includes all the blue bloods—Kentucky, Kansas, UNC, Duke, Indiana and UCLA—only they do things a different way.

Take Wednesday night’s 73-70 win over sixth-ranked Kentucky.

The Wildcats came into the game averaging 95.2 points and had only been held below 87 once, and that was a 21-point win over Michigan State in the first week of the season.

UCLA held UK to 92 points in its only other loss, and that was considered an impressive defensive performance.

Louisville held Kentucky star freshman guard Malik Monk to 16 points on 6-of-17 shooting. That’d be the same Malik Monk who just set North Carolina on fire with 47 points.

Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press

Translation: The Cards can really guard.

And it's no accident.

Louisville coach Rick Pitino has made a career out of figuring out a cheat code. When the three-point line was introduced, his teams embraced it before anyone else. And these days when everyone else is starting to go to small-ball lineups that spread the floor, he’s gone big.

Pitino cannot—or maybe does not want to—recruit like UK’s John Calipari, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski or KU’s Bill Self. That’s not to say Pitino does not recruit at a high level. He does. But he’s never landed a one-and-done freshman while at Louisville. Since Calipari arrived at Kentucky in 2009, Louisville has had six players get drafted in the NBA; UK has had 28.

So instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses (or the Cals), he’s tried to recruit more to his defense than his offense.

Louisville is No. 1 in adjusted defensive efficiency, per kenpom.com, and Pitino has been the best defensive coach in the country over the last seven years.

	AdjD	Rank	eFG%	TO%	Blk%
2016-17	86.4	1	41.1	22.3	18.6
2015-16	87.7	2	44.7	21.6	14.2
2014-15	86.9	5	44.0	21.3	14.4
2013-14	87.9	5	43.9	25.0	12.5
2012-13	83.1	1	44.8	27.0	12.1
2011-12	83.0	1	43.3	23.1	12.8
2010-11	86.2	5	44.5	23.4	13.5

The formula is pretty simple: force a lot of turnovers—Pitino is famous for encouraging and tracking deflections—and hold opponents to low shooting percentages.

The best way to do this is by shrinking the floor, and Pitino’s roster is built with mobile, tall and long athletes.

Five of Louisville’s top seven players are 6'7" or taller, and his best guard, 6'3" Donovan Mitchell, is a freak athlete with a 7'4" wingspan, according to DraftExpress.

Give Pitino those kinds of defensive weapons and he’s going to not just shrink the floor but shrink the rim.

Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press

This team also blocks more shots than any of his other elite defensive teams, which is a slight stylistic change because of all the length. His title team of 2013 was geared more toward trying to force turnovers with his pesky guards. The Cards are still pressuring but more funneling the ball toward their army of shot-blockers. 

It can be difficult for a team built for defense to score the ball on the other end, but Louisville’s offense is not a disaster. The Cardinals are harder to guard this season than recent years when they’ve been too reliant on one or two guards. Junior point guard Quentin Snider became the first Louisville player to score 20 points this season on Wednesday—he had 22.

They don’t have a true go-to guy, which can be problematic when they need one guy to bail them out of a slump. But there’s a healthier dose of inside-out attack that could eventually develop into a top-20ish offense.

Kentucky, on the other hand, is sometimes too reliant on its guards, in particular Monk. He is a phenomenal talent and scorer. But when Calipari said at halftime on Saturday that his jumpers, which were raining on Carolina, were fool's gold, what happened Wednesday night is what he was talking about. Monk is going to have nights when the jumper isn’t falling.

That’s not as much of an issue for UK as you’d think because it can score in a hurry, and fellow freshman De’Aaron Fox is also freaking talented. The UK offense will rarely be a problem.

And on Wednesday night, when the Cats were playing fast and answering Louisville buckets with their own in a matter of seconds, it was fun basketball. Louisville could not win that way. 

The Cards had to play disciplined and get back on defense and muddy things up a bit. 

Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Their style is not always easy on the eyes. They are the ugly cousin of the elite in college basketball this year.

But they are elite.

And you can bet fast-breaking, three-point shooting, bucket-getters from UCLA, Villanova, Kansas, Indiana and Duke want nothing to do with them.

Just ask Kentucky.

C.J. Moore covers college basketball and football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @CJMooreBR.