This Louisville team has struggled mightily for a majority of this season and soon as it starts to look a little better, it actually gets a little worse. The Cardinals were able to pull out a win at home against the Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech two games ago, but since then, they’ve lost back-to-back games by double digits.

One loss came from Boston College, who out scored Louisville 50-30 in the second half after being down by eight points at halftime. Kenny Payne was down to just one capable point guard on the roster in Ty-Laur Johnson in that game, and once they doubled him after halftime, Louisville couldn’t buy a basket on offense and they couldn’t buy a stop on defense, per usual.

As far as playing against Pitt, now Kenny Payne is down to zero capable point guards in this one, because of injuries to Skyy Clark and Ty-Laur Johnson, which made this game nearly impossible to win for a team that struggles even when they’re healthy. It’s inexcusable for a program of Louisville’s status to not have enough depth to lean on in games like this. Due to a poorly constructed roster and lack of NIL use compared to everyone else, Louisville is in a position where winning games is extremely hard to come by. One would argue that Kenny Payne and his staff put themselves in this position before the season even started, and shades of the same color were shown before the start of last season where the Cardinals went 4-28.

The sole bright spot in this game was freshman forward Kaleb Glenn, who’s getting more and more comfortable out there with the opportunities that he’s been getting recently. He started the first half off hitting all of his 6 attempts from the field to score 15 points for his reeling team. Glenn has enough strength to be effective inside the paint area, even though he’s only listed at 6’6. He’s a hard worker who’s engaged on both ends of the floor and a good rebounder as well. These certain skills that Glenn has can be paired with an improved offensive game and Louisville will have another player who’s young with a high upside at the collegiate level.

Outside of that, it was another forgettable game and performance from Louisville, who was doomed before the ball tipped-off. It’s hard to fathom that Louisville only has two capable guards on the team with all these resources that could attract just about anyone around the country, and especially in the transfer portal. There’s been a disconnect between this coaching regime and literally everyone else around them since the beginning and the results show nearly every game. Something internally has to give at the end of this season, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be this coaching staff.

Louisville hung in the first half for a couple of minutes behind Kaleb Glenn’s 100% from the field, but that was short lived as he’s never been a primary scoring option for this team and likely never will be. The Cardinals would much rather lean on Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, who’s been the go-to guy for most of this year, but he only finished the game with 12 points and not much in the first half. Mike James was supposed to be that guy for Kenny Payne this season, however he’s been progressively worse as the season has went on in my opinion. He's struggled to score the ball from an efficiency standpoint and his defense is still the same, which isn’t a good thing to say the least. The fact that one player on the opposing team literally almost outscored Louisville’s entire team is asinine.

The Cardinals found themselves down by ten at halftime, which they were probably satisfied with, because it could’ve easily been more. Their 27 points at halftime matched Pitt’s Blake Hinson, who also had 27 points by himself at halftime, and that was two short of his career high already. How many times is Louisville going to let someone get a career high on them this season? It’s absolutely ridiculous that no one on that bench can figure out a way to prevent someone from scoring and that’s been a bad issue all year. The second half was even worse, because now Louisville was getting the doors blown off them, which has become acceptable at this program now. Hinson went on to finish with a career high 41 points and eight threes on a Louisville team that has become allergic to defense, it’s honestly been that bad.

It’s going to be hard to imagine this coaching staff will get another year to right this ship, but there’s no telling as of right now. If Louisville’s athletic department is still serious about winning, they’ll make the difficult decision to rebuild once again, because it almost certainly couldn’t be any worse than this.

Louisville’s next game will be a winnable one against Notre Dame in the KFC Yum! Center this Wednesday at 7:00 P.M. (ET).