Our Louisville Cardinals will play in front of a national audience at 9:00pm Tuesday night on ESPN 2 when they face the Missouri State Bears. This will be the second game in the series between these schools. The Cardinals have met the Bears just once on the hardwood coming away with a 74-56 Cardinals victory at Freedom Hall in the quarterfinals of the 2006 NIT (3/22/06). The Cardinals come into this game on a four game winning streak and 9-1 on the season. The Bears have won their last two games, are 8-1 and were picked to finish 5th in the Missouri Valley conference.

Coach Paul Lusk has a roster deep with talent and rich with potential. And last season’s most inexperienced Valley team boast one of the deepest benches in the country, sharing the national lead with 12 players averaging 10.0 minutes per game or more. The Bears reserves have accounted for 322 points this season which translates to 46.4 percent of the team’s 694 total points. MSU is getting 35.8 points per game from its bench players. After an 11-22 rebuilding campaign a year ago, Paul Lusk’s troops have turned things around with their first 8-1 start since 2006-07. The club’s current .889 win-loss percentage is an increase of .556 over last year’s .333 percentage.

Leading this team is Sr Jarmar Gulley (13.7 points, 5.7 rebounds) and Soph Marcus Marshall (13.4 points, 2.6 rebounds). Marshall last year’s Missouri Valley Freshman of the Year is a decent scorer, who can hurt you with his jump shot and ability to get to the rim, whereas Gulley is a powerful inside scorer and the team’s best rebounder who missed last season as a medical redshirt.
Other players who are big for the bears are Sr Keith Pickens (5 points, 4.2 rebounds) a decent scorer, but his real ability lies in his defensive prowess, Jr Christian Kirk (8.7 points, 4.9 rebounds) the most productive player coming off their bench, Fr Austin Ruder (8 points, 1.8 rebounds) has knocked down multiple 3-pointers in six of his first nine college ball games. He ranks 6th in the MVC in 3-point accuracy (.442) and 3rd in treys per game (2.1). Jr Ron Mvouika (6.8 points, 2.9 rebounds) a community college transfer who has a size advantage over many at his position and injects offense into this team.

This team is averaging 77.1 points a game with a scoring margin of +8.2 and they average 7.2 three pointers a game at 37%. They have a -0.6 rebounding margin. They do a good job at sharing and taking care of the ball averaging 12.3 assist a game, just 9.9 turnovers a game with a turnover margin of +3.4. Their assist/turnover ratio is 1.25.

Missouri State
2013-14 OVERALL RANKINGS
-POINTS PER GAME
77.1
93rd
OVERALL
-REBOUNDS PER GAME
34.9
212th
OVERALL
-ASSISTS PER GAME
12.3
219th
OVERALL
-FIELD GOAL PCT
.449
170th
OVERALL

Kenpom Ranks
Overall – #123
Defense Adjustment Efficiency
-102.4 ranks 150th
Offensive Adjustment Efficiency
-105.6 ranks 130th

Coach Pitino was emphatic in his post-game on Saturday about Cardinal Nation being at the game on Tuesday night saying this would be one of our toughest games up to this point in the season. Deep teams are always a little more dangerous because they can keep fresh guys coming into the game and it takes away that fatigue factor. This is an aspect of the ball game the Cardinals emphasize. Chris Jones is expected to play in this one so the Cards will have their second leading scorer back. His minutes may be limited in his first game back and if so it will be another opportunity for some other guys to step up and get quality time. This is going to be a game that will test the Cardinals efficiency and we’ll see if Mango can keep trending upwards. Since being injected into the Cardinals line-up he is starting to measure up to some of Gorgui’s numbers. Dieng had a block rate of 9.4 percent and committed 3.3 fouls per 40 minutes, and Mathiang’s block rate is 8.2 percent and he’s fouling 3.6 times per 40 minutes. This game might be close and competitive for the first half but eventually the Cards have too much talent and will run away with this one.