After coming up short (again) at Kentucky and rebounding with an embarrassing loss to Florida State at home, there were a growing number of voices that were expressing their concerns about the direction of this team. Unfortunately, last night’s performance against Miami did not do much to ease Louisville fans as the Cardinals jumped out to a sizable lead early, only to see it squandered away and kept too close for comfort for the remainder of the game.

The days of coaches tweeting about and hinting at a trip to Atlanta this spring feel like a distant memory. Louisville basketball is not where it should be if they want to spend the early part of April in the Peach State, and those around the program are beginning to adjust their expectations for the months ahead. Whether that be out of self defense or gut feelings, fans have every reason to feel this way.

But is this an overreaction? Is this Louisville team really out of the National Title picture already?

Last year, Ryan Collinsworth of the Action Network dug through Ken Pomeroy’s numbers to find if there if there was an attribute or attributes that all national champions share so that he could better predict which teams were in the running to cut down the nets. After playing around with KenPom’s adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies, he found that while those numbers were helpful on their own, they were not overwhelming when it came to spotting champion-caliber teams.

However, together he found that the adjusted efficiency margin (AdjEM), which is the calculated difference between a team’s offensive and defensive efficiencies, was an excellent predictor when used properly. Put simply, the AdjEM is a way to determine how well-balanced a team is. The more balanced a team, the better they are. He found that teams that operated with at least a 23.81 AdjEM rating represented the top 15.87% of all tournament teams since the 2001-02 season.

Using this threshold, teams operating at this level of balance or higher are responsible for 15 of the last 18 national champions*, 11 of the last 18 runners-up, and 55 of the last 72 Final Four teams. In fact, the entire Final Four last season operated above the threshold, with Auburn’s 25.00 rating being the lowest and champion Virginia’s 34.22 being the highest.

*Funny note: two of the three teams that have won a title below the threshold were UConn’s 2011 (21.7) and 2014 (19.12), with 2014 being by far the lowest rated champion in KenPom history. I will never get over that Sweet 16 loss.

The bad news is that this Louisville team has an AdjEM rating of 23.35, which sits just below the threshold. The good news, however, is there is a lot of time to get this number up, although it will be increasingly difficult as we get into the thick of ACC play. The other piece of good news is how down college basketball is as a whole this year compared to last. Louisville is the first team outside of the AdjEM threshold, yet they rank 5th in KenPom’s overall rankings. Whereas last year the first team that sat outside of the threshold was KenPom’s 14th ranked Florida State. This means if the season ended today, only four teams would have a legitimate shot of winning the national championship. This number is a far cry from the 13 teams that theoretically had a chance last year.

This is encouraging as there is still plenty of time for Louisville to get this number up, and there is far less competition at the top this year. But this team still has a long way to go with improving their balance, particularly on offense. We saw in the Kentucky game that our frontcourt is fully capable of willing our team to victory if the team is able to hit FGs and FTs at a mediocre rate. And we saw against Florida State that even if Nwora is playing out of his mind, without the bigs producing around the rim, this team falls flat.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise as Ed Feng, creator of The Power Rank, found that only four national champions between 2002 and 2016 attempted more than ~33% of their field goals from 3. Louisville is currently attempting 36.45% of their FGs, which is not outlandishly high, but certainly in a risky area if they want to be a championship-caliber team. Louisville’s 2013 National Champion team was in a great spot as they had the top AdjEM in the country (32.92) and only shot 28.31% of their FGs from 3. Louisville’s other most recent Final Four teams, ’05 and ’12, attempted 41.57% (!) and 33.2% of their FGs from 3, respectively. While the ’05 and ’13 teams were both above the AdjEM threshold, the ’13 team was the only one below Feng’s 3-point threshold. Shall I remind you which team won it all?

What does all of this mean? Despite the recent slump, Louisville is by no means out of the hunt for a national championship. With the right adjustments and development, the Cardinals can get their numbers where champions need them to be. Louisville has shown the flashes of brilliance they need to be at that level. We saw the frontcourt against Kentucky. We saw the star power against FSU. Tie them together with some above-average guard play like we saw against Michigan and this can be very dangerous team in March and April.

Hang in there, y’all. There’s still a long season ahead of us.