The Louisville Cardinals extended their win streak to seven games on Wednesday night with an 86-69 win at Boston College. Louisville is now 18-3 and alone atop the ACC standings at 9-1. Boston College falls to 10-11 and 4-6.
For Louisville, it was all about Jordan Nwora on Wednesday. In spite of his team’s success, the preseason ACC player of the year came into the game only averaging 10.0 points in his last four contests. Nwora responded with a career high 37 point effort, the most scored by a Cardinal since Russ Smith scored 42 against Houston in the 2014 AAC tournament.
Nwora had 21 at halftime on 5 of 6 shooting from three point range. He finished at 11-20 from the field with 7 made threes and 9 rebounds. Dwayne Sutton (10) and Darius Perry (14) each scored in double figures as well. Malik Williams finished with 3 points and 13 rebounds.
Derryck Thornton led Boston College with 17 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists. Jay Heath added 16 points, 1 rebound and 1 assist. Jairus Hamilton had 13 points and 1 rebound.
Louisville extended its streak on the backs of Nwora’s big night, but it was rather close throughout the first portion of the game. Louisville trailed 25-16 eight minutes into the first half. The Cards crept back into it and led 45-43 at halftime. Louisville took its first double digit lead around the 12 minute mark, but the margin was as low as 5 before the under-8 timeout. From there Louisville went on a quick 14-2 run and finished the Eagles off without any issues.
This was a type of game that we’ve been wanting out of Jordan Nwora all season. His team was trailing early on in the game, and Nwora took over to help them regain the lead and ultimately pull away from Boston College. He had scored 32 in the Florida State game, but that was in a losing effort. The team had really flourished these past few weeks despite Nwora’s low scoring numbers, but this team’s chances are always going to be better when number 33 is lighting up the box score.
Given Louisville’s performance over Clemson on Saturday, you would have liked to see a more comfortable win over a seemingly worse BC team. This is conference play though, and no matter how down the ACC is, winning on the road is a tough thing to do. Louisville led at halftime and never gave back that lead after the break. The Cards have kept this thing rolling on for nearly a month now. After a rather up and down first 2 months, we are finally seeing the team we thought we were getting this preseason.
Up Next:
Louisville stays on the road for a Saturday matchup with NC State at 2:00 p.m. on ESPN.
