Stats were gathered using teamrankings.com, foxsports.com, evanmiya.com. Stats with parenthesis are the teams’ national rank in this statistic. Evan Miya OBPR is an offensive efficiency statistic that predicts future outcomes. Evan Miya DBPR is a defensive efficiency statistic that predicts future outcomes. Evan Miya combines OBPR and DBPR together.

Today will be a short preview due to me being behind on a lot of things after getting sick. Louisville looks to sweep this home and away series tonight late in the YUM center. Fans have a decent idea what to expect tonight, but I doubt as much from Louisville. I’ll give you my thoughts below.

                NC State is a team that tries to get the ball inside and likes to dribble drive with guys like Dereon Seabron. I sense a bit of trouble with this if Louisville plays limited minutes with Jerrod West. I’m not confident that Locke, Faulkner, or Ellis can man up with Seabron. Louisville did a good job limiting him last game to only 11 points, but we will see what tonight looks like.

                Defensively, NC State has some mediocre numbers. NC State ranks 217^th in the nation with opposing two point percentage and they have a high percentage of near proximity percentage for opposing teams. This will be an opportunity for Louisville to continue to work on getting more paint touches and getting to the charity stripe.

                I predict Louisville will look a lot differently tonight. Fans some glimpses of this against Flordia State, but fans will get to see if Mack sticks with it tonight. Ellis and Faulkner have earner a majority of the minutes in the fans eyes and fans saw Mack favor them two against Florida State. My only concern with this is that Louisville cannot have Locke out there with the two of them because they are a liability defensively. I believe Ellis is ahead of the two of them and has improved in recent games, but West will need to be in the rotation if Louisville wants to continue to be successful with the pac line defense. Mack did show a zone defense against Florida State Saturday evening, so this may be an adjustment for our guys lack of ability to play man to man defense that the pac line stresses. Overall, everyone knows that this team is more successful with Ellis and Faulkner in the lineup. Mack looks to be making adjustments, but fans will get to see if he is consistent with them.

                I will be back in the Yum tonight for this one, so I’ll be limited on Twitter and Reddit. 9:00 tip gives me plenty of time to pregame for this game and hopefully enjoy a Louisville win. I’ll be looking for Mack to stay consistent with these changes fans saw against Florida State and possibly change the defense up a bit. I predict Louisville winning 79-76. Seabron will give us trouble with this new rotation we’re running but Louisville should keep up offensively.

-degenerateCARD

Stats via haslemetrics.com, evanmiya.com, teamrankings.com, foxsports.com, and ESPN.com