Chris Mack Criticizes Louisville's Starting Efforts After Consecutive Losses

Following back-to-back losses to Miami & FSU, the head coach of the Cardinals was critical of his team's slow starts over the course of the season.

(Photo of Chris Mack: Charles LeClaire/USA TODAY Sports)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - While the Louisville men's basketball program had, by and large, exceeded most people's expectations to start the 2020-21 season, most observers could point out a disturbing trend. In most of their contests, the Cardinals had trouble starting out games in some magnitude. While it hadn't reflected in the win column yet, it was only a matter of time before it did and became a real problem.

After starting out the season with a 9-1 record, the Cardinals have now dropped back-to-back conference games against Miami and Florida State, with poor initial effort and execution at the forefront of the reasoning for defeat.

Following the decisive loss against the Seminoles on Monday night, head coach Chris Mack let his frustrations be known in the postgame press conference regarding the matter. To say he pulled no punched would be an understatement.

"It is fairly obvious that we got punked from the beginning of the game," he said in his opening statement. "We weren't who we needed to be to start the game. We really weren't for the first 13-15 minutes. I am disappointed. We have a lot of growing up to do in order to match that type of intensity to compete at this level with some of the teams we are playing."

As the presser went on and Mack slowly dissected the debacle to the media, he became more visibly, and audibly, frustrated with the early game effort and execution by his team.

"The defense that we played was soft, we gave up way too many easy open jump shots," he continued. "It doesn't take a whole lot of talent to sprint your a** back, to find your man and get matched up to make it a five-on-five game. Whether we are young, inexperienced or intimidated, I don't know. But s**t needs to get corrected."

The third year head coach of the Cardinals, however, didn't place all the blame on his players. In fact, he himself took the brunt of it, saying that he and his coaching staff need to help them develop better habits that translate onto the floor.

He also noted that the team had a "really poor practice" before heading to Coral Gables to face Miami, and that it was hard to wear down Florida State's players "who have played 36 or 37 minutes" while coming off a 3:30 a.m. flight. Still, Mack noted that the physical standpoint is only one factor.

"There were some things (vs. FSU) that had nothing to do with physicality," he said. "It doesn't take any physicality to sprint back and find out who you are guarding and communicate. You don't do that when you're in high school, you don't do that when you're a freshman on a top 15 team a year ago that doesn't play. You have to do it now and if you don't do it now then Florida State is going to get wide open threes like they did in the first half."

Fortunately, the players seem to see eye-to-eye with Coach Mack in that this is a major problem that needs addressing. After the game, Carlik Jones admitted that they didn't come ready to play, and David Johnson noted that Florida State simply wanted it more, and that it something the team a whole has been trying to figure out for the last 2-3 weeks.

"We need to stop putting ourselves in that situation," Jones said. "We're in a conference where a lot of teams are good, and if you put yourself in a hole against a good team like Florida State, it's hard to come out of it. That's our huge downfall right now - being ready to play."

Whether a solution is inevitably found or not, Mack said that he and his staff have dedicated themselves to finding a way to fix it. With teams like Duke and Virginia on the horizon, a fix to this problem needs to be found sooner rather than later.

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