—Jeff Goodman ranks the top transfers currently on the market and has Louisville targets Justin Turner (No. 1) and Kevin Marfo (No. 5) both in the top five. Darius Perry also makes the list at No. 11.
—Offers, including one from Louisville, continue to pour in for JuCo guard El Ellis.
—Scott Satterfield spoke with the media via teleconference on Tuesday and said, among other things, that he’s hopeful the 2020 college football season will be able to go off without much of a hitch.
“I’m planning for the season to go on,” Satterfield said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “We’re a long ways away before then. I think, hopefully, we’ll get this virus under control. I think we’re learning every, single day. Our medical people and our caretakers and people taking care of the sick people, I really commend all those people. I think about those people a lot. Hopefully we’ll come up with some drugs that will get into this virus and help people get well, meanwhile working on a vaccine. We’ve got to stay positive and upbeat and really think forward that this season is going to get in. I think we know what sports do for your psyche. Not only for us that are doing them but for everybody out there, all the fans that really love sports and really need that. . . . I just think as a country we need it for our psyche, for our well-being.”
While most of the college football world was early into spring practice when the COVID-19 threat put the brakes on the whole thing, Louisville was nearly halfway through its allotment of 15 on-field sessions.
Having completed seven practices is just a slight advantage, but Satterfield will take any kind of advantage he can get as coaches and players sit at home like everyone else until an all-clear is given to resume activities. For Satterfield, it has meant more time at home with his family and some time in North Carolina with his oldest son, who was finishing his senior year of high school there but who has, like all seniors, lost some of the milestone moments that come with the final semester of high school.
As for football, the practice of starting spring work early may have paid off just a bit for Satterfield and his staff.
“We started doing it, I want to say, back in 2014, so it’s been a while. Maybe the spring of ’15. We started doing that right when they got back from Christmas break,” Satterfield said. “They had about a three-week period to get acclimated, maybe a little lifting weights, then we jumped right on it first of February and initially when we tried it we were just going to see how it worked out. But we really liked it. I think the coaches really liked it, the players really liked it, because we got on it, knocked it out before spring break, and we were able to come back and train for roughly eight or nine weeks of straight lifting and running and some player-led practices, where they’d go out on their own and do some fundamentals, throw the football, almost stealing practices. Coaches weren’t out there, but players could do that and carry it right into the summer.
—Quinnipiac grad transfer forward Kevin Marfo has “cut” his list of potential schools to 16. It’s a list that includes Louisville. Marfo led the nation in rebounding last season.
—One more name to keep an eye on, Louisville is reportedly one of dozens of schools that have reached out to Yale grad transfer Jordan Bruner, a 6’9 forward who nearly averaged a double-double last season.
—James Burgess is returning to the New York Jets for another season.
—A happy 40-year anniversary to Louisville’s first national title.
—Also, a happy eight-year anniversary to the final dub from one of the most fun and unexpected eight-game winning streaks in the history of Cardinal basketball.
—Jordan Nwora’s latest Third Team All-American honor comes from the NABC.
—Ricky O’Donnell ranks Nwora as the 11th-best player in college basketball for the 2019-20 season.
11. Jordan Nwora, F, Louisville
Nwora is the type of player every college basketball team wants but few actually have: a big wing who can score from all three levels of the floor. He carried the scoring load for a powerful Louisville team all year, acting as the primary option on the No. 12 offense in the country. Nwora averaged 18 points per game and shot a career-best 40 percent from three on six attempts per game as a junior. He ranked in the 82nd percentile of points per possession in the country.
—Chris Mack is the guest on the latest episode of Jeff Goodman’s podcast. He fields questions from Goodman’s daughter for about 15 minutes.
—For U of L All-American pitcher Reid Detmers, 2020 has been a whirlwind.
—I thoroughly enjoyed this breakdown of the basketball game from The Office.
—Illinois-Chicago has hired Texas assistant (and before that Michigan assistant) Luke Yaklich to be its next head coach. Louisville assistant Luke Murray had been rumored to be one of the front-runners to land that gig.
—Ole Miss asking fans and alums to update their wills to include a donation of money to the school in the middle of a pandemic seems ... well it seems like something Ole Miss would do.
Ice. Cold. pic.twitter.com/4TXNpEHjwI
— inessentials? in this economy? (@inessentials) March 24, 2020
—There will be no Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
—Lamar Jackson welcomed Tom Brady to his home state the best way he knew how.
—Former Louisville PG recruit Zion Harmon is headed to Western Kentucky.
100% Committed pic.twitter.com/FeA7rWJRnF
— Zion Harmon (@zion_harmon) March 24, 2020
Never bet against Rick Stansbury.
—BetOnline has the over/under for Mekhi Becton’s draft position at 8.5.
—Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence and his girlfriend started a GoFundMe page to try to help coronavirus victims. Naturally, it ran into some issues.
—Steven Enoch highlights from the 2019-20 season:
—Congrats to former U of L assistant Greg Paulus, who has won the Joe B. Hall Award for being the nation’s top first-year head coach. Paulus took over as Niagara’s head coach just before the start of the season after Patrick Beilein had to abruptly leave the program for personal reasons.
—North Carolina’s Cole Anthony is holding off on making an official decision about his future.
— Cole Anthony (@The_ColeAnthony) March 24, 2020
—John Lewis of WDRB looks at how the postponement of the Olympics affects Olympians with local ties.
—And finally, if you haven’t started watching Tiger King on Netflix yet, now is the time to start. It’s the perfect level of batshit crazy docuseries for the situation we all find ourselves in right now.