LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The crowd roared. The building buzzed. The lights went up on the return of University of Louisville basketball. The “ReviVILLE” you might have heard about.
Well, put a pin in that for a bit. No. 12 ranked Tennessee popped the Cardinals in the mouth on Saturday afternoon and stuck a pin in the balloon of hope that had grown through two summer exhibition games, two exhibition games against weaker opponents and a season-opener against Morehead State.
It's too early to be deflated. But as a white-out crowd of just under 17,000 in the KFC Yum! Center headed for the exits in a 77-55 Louisville loss, reality did drift down in little white flakes.
It took all of five minutes. That’s how long it took Tennessee to grab a 10-0 lead, and for Louisville to acclimate to its more athletic, physical opponent. Even after the Cardinals adjusted, they couldn’t always compete with the Volunteers, who walked away with a 40-10 edge in points in the paint and a 40-21 rebounding margin.
FACING THE MUSIC
I was interested to hear what Louisville coach Pat Kelsey said after his first loss. Athletics director Josh Heird approached him after the game and told him he was sorry if he pressured Kelsey into taking on such a tough opponent in the second game. Kelsey, instead, told him, “Thank you,” and said it was an experience his team will benefit from. Then Kelsey went out to face the media music.
Louisville's Noah Watterman is blocked by Tennessee's J.P. Estrella in the first half of a 77-52 loss in the KFC Yum! Center.
He did so pretty straightforwardly and with candor, hitting on a good many specifics, but remaining positive.
“The fact of the matter is, they were the better team tonight,” Kelsey said. “They punched us in the mouth from the very beginning. The only way to describe it is they beat us in almost every single facet of the game. . . . It's the first time this team has gotten punched in the mouth and faced adversity since June 5, when I stood up here at my press conference and we signed this team. They’ve had a lot of ‘atta boys’ and a lot of pats on the back and a lot of high fives. I mean what I've said since this team’s been together -- they’ve been phenomenal. It's a really, really good group, and I do believe, with everything I got, that this team is going to end up being really good. But, for the first time, [we] got hit in the mouth and [we’re] going to face adversity.”
Here's what Louisville is – a seasoned team of players brought from various (mostly mid-major) programs who have experienced success. It is a team of solid shooters. It is not overly athletic. It has good length but not a great deal of bulk.
"THE OFFENSE STUNK"
The big questions about this roster after the exhibition season were:
1. How will it fare when it faces a top-notch defensive team dedicated to shutting down the perimeter game.
2. How will it stand up defensively to a more rugged opponent?
3. Can it rebound consistently enough to keep top-level opponents off the glass.
Louisville's Kasean Pryor is blocked by Tennessee's Jahmal Marshack in the second half of a 77-52 loss in the KFC Yum! Center.
The Cardinals didn’t have many answers for those questions on Saturday. They insisted on firing up three-pointers in the first half when Tennessee impeded their offensive movement.
“We’re a rhythm offensive team,” Kelsey said. “I thought they took us out of what we wanted to do, and it forced us, not forced us but turned us into too much one-on-one, too much dribbling, which is one hundred percent not how we play on the offensive end.”
But Kelsey wasn't done.
“Yeah (the offense) stunk. It stunk,” he said. “. . . They didn’t allow us to get into a rhythm. They blew up dribble handoffs. They were very aggressive on ball screens, just muddied up the game and it forced us to play without the normal flow. I thought early on we were settling for just OK instead of trying to hunt great, as we say on the offensive end. We talked about playing on the attack, getting downhill, touching the paint, putting foul pressure on them. I felt like we were playing around the perimeter a little bit too much in the first half, so I have to watch the tape. But you asked what we need to improve on the offensive end, I would answer you, ‘everything’. . . . The one thing I would never, ever, ever do as a head coach, is ever blame the players, right? I start with me first and foremost; I could’ve done a better job getting our guys ready and preparing them and putting them in better positions.”
BULLIED BY TENNESSEE
A good many of those things are problems of adjustment. As Louisville faces that kind of defense more, it will adjust, it will figure out how to cut harder, or smarter. It will be more persistent in insisting on its own movement, regardless of defense, and Kelsey and his staff will have to work out ways to create it.
Louisville's Reyna Smith buries a three-pointer in the second half of a 77-55 loss to Tennessee in the KFC Yum! Center.
Defensively, it struggled to get stops. Tennessee scored on 18 of 33 first-half possessions, and of the 15 it didn’t’ score on, 11 were because of turnovers. They missed only 11 shots in the half and rebounded six of those. The Vols grabbed 15 of the game’s first 18 rebounds.
It's one thing to work your game plan and know it cold. It’s another to prepare for a an upgraded level of physicality. That’s tough to duplicate in practice.
Defense can be improved upon, just like offensive movement. Rebounding is likely to be an issue all season.
Despite all of that, Louisville kept plugging away. It ran its offense. It fought on defense. When Reyne Smith hit back-to-back three-pointers with just over 13 minutes left, Louisville’s deficit was only nine.
Then Tennessee’s Zakai Zeigler took over. He hit a three at the shot-clock buzzer, then banged in another one. He scored six points in just over two minutes, took over the game, keyed an 8-0 run and that was that. The Vols were up 23 and Louisville wouldn’t get closer than 19 the rest of the game.
Tennessee's Zakai Zeigler buries a three as the shot clock expires to end a Louisville run and spark a run that the Volunteers would use to put the game away.
Of Zeigler, Kelsey said, “A phenomenal stinking player. He was dominant today. He’s the preseason defensive player of the year in the SEC for a reason. He wreaks havoc. I believe in our guys. I believe in our guards. I know what they are capable of. Those guys feel terrible right now, and they’re better than how they played today. I’m better than how I coached today, but you give that kid credit. You tip your cap to big moments when we had a little bit of momentum and the Yum started rocking, he answered, even if it was a little bit of a prayer shot at the end of the shot clock. It’s what big-time players do.”
MOVING FORWARD
The question now, is what Kelsey and his players will do. Kelsey noted that what happened on Saturday will help his team. That it needed that loss, perhaps. I couldn’t help but think back to Kenny Payne saying Louisville “needed” the “whoopin’” it took against Lenoir-Rhyne in his first game, because of things that happened in the program before he arrived that hadn’t healed yet.
This was not the same thing, I don’t think. Kelsey wasn’t blaming anyone. But he said the experience of being exposed should help him and his players to focus effort on their areas of weakness.
“My challenge to them in the locker room was not the X’s and O’s that we have to clean up, because there’s a lot of them, like I said, almost every facet of the game,” Kelsey said. “. . . But that meeting in was about walking out and having our circle tighter than ever. Walking out of that room and having a resolve about them. As they go back to their dorms, and like all kids do, check their social media, and all the people that’s been telling them how good they are just crushing them, because that’s how it is, that’s the world. I just told them, don’t blink. Don’t blink. Look to the guy to the right of you, look to the guy next to you, love him more than ever. Don't blame anybody else. Don't complain about anything else, don’t get defensive. Just know that we’ve got to go back to work on Monday and get better, and we will.
“. . . I told them the one thing that they don’t have to worry about is us being good,” Kelsey said. “The one thing they don’t have to worry about is us being good. We're going to become a good team. I believe that, deep down in my soul, with every single fiber of my being, but we've got a long way to go.”
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