Louisville vs. North Carolina
Duke is the unquestioned class of the ACC this season, especially after their win against Michigan, but the second tier in the conference has some good teams, including Louisville and North Carolina. Both teams are just 9-5 in conference play this season, even though they’re both ranked in the Top 25. All five of the Cardinals’ losses have come in Quadrant 1-A games. This Louisville vs. North Carolina game fits that criteria, so it’s a big one for Pat Kelsey’s squad.
Similarly, four of UNC’s six losses are in Quadrant 1-A games. The difference is that they’ve also won three of them. So while Louisville doesn’t have a bad loss, you could argue that they are missing a signature win, while the Tar Heels have wins over Duke at home and also Kentucky and Virginia on the road. Louisville has been unable to step up and beat some of the nation’s best up to this point. Does that change on Monday night?
This preview focuses solely on this game, but we’ve got daily best bets from Greg Peterson, as well as his daily spread and total projections, picks six days a week from Adam Burke, and men’s and women’s college basketball projections five days a week from Tyler Shoemaker, the proprietor of the T Shoe Index.
This season, we’ve also connected with CBBAnalytics.com to access their data and I’ll be working that into my article. Use promo code VSIN30 for $30 off at CBB Analytics and find your betting edge.
Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook as of February 22, 9:45 pm PT; check out our Circa Betting Splits and DraftKings Betting Splits.
Louisville (-2.5, 163.5) vs. North Carolina
7 p.m. ET (ESPN)
The Quadrant 1-A losses for Louisville are Arkansas, Tennessee, Duke x2, and SMU, with the loss to the Mustangs this past Tuesday in Dallas. Each one of the Q1-A losses for the Cardinals have been by 9+ points and they’ve been really bad defensively in those games. The Cardinals have allowed 1.128 points per possession or more in all of them. Their best offensive performance in one of those games is just 1.112 PPP. They need to be better than that to go to Chapel Hill and win here.
The Tar Heels have dropped five ACC games, but all of them have been on the road. They are a perfect 6-0 in the Dean Dome against conference foes. From a degree of difficulty standpoint, it has been low outside of the Duke win and Louisville is far and away the second-best team that UNC will have faced on their home floor. Hubert Davis had to tweak some things after the Tar Heels started 2-3 in conference clashes and they’ve gone 7-2 since, so this is a team that is maybe better than the betting market is giving them credit for with some of those tough early impressions.
In terms of conference body of work, though, Louisville is the much stronger team statistically. The Cardinals are third in adjusted offensive efficiency and fourth in adjusted defensive efficiency, while the Tar Heels are fifth and 11th, respectively, in those categories. The UNC defense has really been hurt by a low 13.5% TO% and opponents are shooting nearly 40% from 3 against them in conference games.
That, though, is one of the tweaks that Davis made. Over their first five conference games, the Tar Heels allowed a 44.9% 3P%, as opponents were 70/156 from beyond the arc and each one of those teams hit at least 12 3-pointers. In fact, four of the five made at least 14 triples. Since then, North Carolina has locked in better defensively and the most 3s they’ve allowed in a conference game is nine.
That is the biggest key to this game because Louisville will fire from anywhere on the floor. The Cardinals have the third-highest 3P Rate in the nation at more than 51%. They’re shooting 35.9% from 3 overall in conference play and 37.1% in road games, yet they’ve gone just 3-3 in those six matchups.
It should be noted that four of Louisville’s losses this season came without leading scorer Mikel Brown Jr. (18.6 PPG). He missed about a month worth of action from mid-December to mid-January. He’s scored at least 20 points in five of his nine games back, including a 45-point performance in a blowout win over NC State. Brown isn’t the only bucket-getter on the team, as Ryan Conwell is right behind him with 18.3 PPG. Conwell has taken 246 3-pointers against just 118 2-pointers, hence the low FG%, but he’s a 35% 3-point shooter.
On the North Carolina side, Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar do a lot of the heavy lifting. Wilson has 19.8 PPG and 9.4 RPG, while Veesaar has 16.5 PPG and 8.8 RPG. Louisville will have to figure out how to slow down those bigs in order to get this victory.
Louisville vs. North Carolina Prediction
Sometimes you have to take an “I’ll pay to see it” mentality. If Louisville is going to go into a hostile environment against a very good team and pull out the victory, more power to them. I’ll tip my cap. But, the Cardinals have not played very well in these big litmus test games. Their statistical profile has a lot to do with how they’ve rocked lesser teams. North Carolina’s best has been seen more against this level of competition and that should be the case here as well.
Pick: North Carolina +2.5
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