Weather update – the game will be played as scheduled.
Duke’s road victory over Louisville comes with an unfortunate asterisk: the Cardinals’ best player, freshman Mikel Brown Jr., was inactive. In fact, Brown had missed all of Louisville’s ACC action before playing in their win Saturday over Virginia Tech. Brown certainly performed like a player fully recovered from injury in his return, putting up 20 points in 28 minutes with hyper-efficient shooting. That begs the question: how different will Louisville look tonight with a healthy Brown on the floor?
Brown has played just the one ACC contest while missing only the Cardinals’ last two non-conference games, so comparing the conference schedule versus Louisville’s whole season is quite illustrative. During conference play, the Cardinals have leaned heavily on Ryan Conwell, who “used” (according to the analytics at KenPom) a staggering 30.6% of the Cardinals’ possessions, the fourth highest rate in the country in conference play. Most of those possessions are shots by Conwell, who has taken more nearly 36% of the Cardinals’ shots during this span—the most of any player in the country.
But Conwell’s efficiency has faltered during conference play. This is likely attributable both to the rigor of the ACC schedule and Brown’s absence, but the drop off of nearly 10 points in his offensive rating remains notable. As a point of comparison, Cameron Boozer’s offensive rating hasn’t dropped at all in conference play relative to his full season numbers.
Three point specialist Isaac McKneely has also felt the absence of his point guard. McKneely is one of the Top 250 most offensively efficient players in the country over the full season, shooting nearly 38% from deep. But during ACC play, McKneely’s efficiency has dropped nearly five points, with his three-point accuracy falling to just 33%.
Notably, neither Conwell or McKneely immediately bounced back with Brown’s return against Virginia Tech: they shot a combined 6-for-18 from deep. It was instead the Cardinals’ bigs, J’Vonne Hadley and Sanada Fru, who seemed to benefit most from Brown’s playmaking abilities.
It remains to be seen how fully Brown will be reintegrated into the Louisville attack by tonight’s Big Monday showdown. But the gameplan that prompted the Blue Devils’ comeback a few weeks ago—namely, have Dame Sarr ultra-focused on Conwell and make others score—won’t work with Brown on the floor. Early this season, Brown’s presence helped Conwell and McKneely become two of the most dangerous shooters in the country, while on Saturday he facilitated for his bigs. Duke may have to choose which of those two attacks they want to focus on to slow down the Cardinal offense.