Louisville’s first real look at Pat Kelsey’s tweaks arrived Wednesday night, and even in a sloppy exhibition win over Mercyhurst, the shape of this team was easy to see.
The Cards rolled to a 71-39 victory, but the cleaner takeaway had less to do with the margin than with where Louisville wants to live. The ball kept finding the paint.
The rim kept taking a beating. And the new frontline pieces started flashing exactly why the interior is going to matter for this group.
On the opening possession, Alvaro Folguieras caught it at the top and fed Flory Bidunga inside for an easy finish after the seal. That became the theme. Louisville scored 56 of its 71 points in the paint, and the bigs were in the middle of it all.
Bidunga was a force around the basket. His nine field goals all came as slams or very nearly so, and he finished with nine rebounds and a couple blocks while showing the same rawness that appears when he strays outside his comfort zone.
Obi Ekezie made a big imprint too, officially credited with four blocks and also altering plenty of other Mercyhurst shots just by being there. He added eight rebounds.
Folguieras did a little of everything: seven boards and five assists to go with the kind of interior initiation Louisville will lean on. With 7-5 Gabe Dynes projected to miss four months, the Cardinals at least have the kind of inside presence that was missing in Pat Kelsey’s first two teams.
And then there’s Sananda Fru.
The man you forgot to remember to forget.
Louisville did find a pair of threes early, with Isaac Ellis drilling the Cardinals’ first one 28 minutes into the game and Jackson Shelstad hitting the next one on the very next trip. After that, the perimeter was mostly quiet. The Cards finished with just those two triples.
They also left points at the line. Louisville went 9 for 17 there, good for 53 percent, which is the sort of number that can turn from footnote to issue fast once the games matter.
The turnovers were another messy part of the night. Louisville had 17 of them, most of them unforced.
Bidunga was responsible for four, all in moments when he tried to do more than what his game naturally gives him. Folguieras had three, including two late as the game loosened up and he went for home-run plays in transition.
The crowd was quiet, the urgency uneven, and the Cards looked like a team still sorting out its habits. But there were positive flashes beyond the paint touches and rim pressure.
Karter Knox and Adrian Wooley hooked up for one of the prettier plays of the night, with Knox leading a 2-on-1 break and Wooley tossing it back to him for the dunk. Folguieras also showed the kind of hustle that coaches love, diving to the floor for a loose-ball tie-up.
Louisville opened the second half by scoring on its first six possessions. And when the defense sharpened after halftime, the results followed.
Bo Zhang got minutes alongside Ellis, while Wooley stood out even without scoring, finishing with five rebounds and two assists. De’Shayne Montgomery was steady again off the bench, efficient and useful in the way a team wants from a reserve.
One more note from the evening: the score was 71-39, and next Monday it gets real.
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Trimble brings plenty of recognition with him after four seasons at North Carolina, where he built a rsum that made him a familiar name well before he landed in Louisville. For the Cardinals, the watch-list selection is another reminder that this transfer could matter well beyond depth and rotation pieces, with Trimble now positioned to be one of the more closely tracked players on the roster this season. [Read more 🡒]