Cards Host BC One Day Early -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

WBB Faces Eagles in Rescheduled Game

With the impending winter storm about to hit Louisville and, well, everywhere else, dozens of college basketball games this weekend have had their start times shifted or the games postponed or outright canceled. The KFC Yum! Center was set to host a game each day this weekend, and both have been moved to try to get fans (and teams) out safely before the weather sets in. The men's game was the first to be rescheduled, moving earlier in the afternoon instead of the 4PM listed start time. The women's game, as Daryl mentioned yesterday, was moved from Sunday to this morning. 

Louisville will host a Boston College team that shouldn't pose too much of a threat. That's quite good, since I wrote a little about Louisville's tough upcoming schedule earlier this week. The Eagles are just 4-17 overall and are last in the conference at 0-8. They've lost 13 straight games and only one of their eight conference losses has been by fewer than 15 points. They lost by three at home to Pitt, giving the Panthers their only ACC win so far this season. 

Despite their woeful schedule, BC ranks 3rd in the conference in free throw percentage (75%) which is also good for 60th in the country. They also have a player, Athena Tomlinson (great name by the way), who has 103 assists, which is also good for 3rd in the league and 23rd in the country. Tomlinson has the league's 12th best assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.69. Tomlinson's 103 assists, though, are out of only 261 total for the entire team this year. Yikes. BC's offense scores just 62.7 points per game and their average scoring margin is -11. The Eagles' 61 points against Pittsburgh are the most they have scored in a conference game. 

Louisville should be able to have a field day. The Eagles do manage to force slightly more turnovers than they commit (15.9 vs 15.2), but they allow opponents to shoot 47% from the floor and have an average rebounding margin of -4.7. The Cards should be able to get good shots, dominate the paint, and win the battle of the boards. It's not just the paint where teams beat up on BC, though, as they allow shooters space as well. Opponents are making 34.5% of their three-point attempts against the Eagles. 

Louisville WBB will want to get this game out of the way and potentially hit the road early to get to the west coast for next week's games. There was no change to the TV for today's game, as it was already scheduled to be on ACC Network Extra. That arrangement remains, and you can check it out at 11am.

Until next time, Go Cards!

Case