LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Basic defensive fundamentals. That’s all that kept the University of Louisville men’s basketball team from a second straight ACC victory in Syracuse Wednesday night.
The Cardinals continued their improvement on the offensive end. But in the end, Syracuse shot the ball even better, making 64 percent of its shots from the field to outscore Louisville 94-92 in the JMA Wireless Dome.
"I thought we played hard enough and well enough to win the game," Louisville coach Kenny Payne said. "But we made some mental errors at some critical junctures. But I'm very proud of the guys for their fight. . . . I would love to have walked out of this building with a win, knowing that they were 10-1 at home. But we fell just short"
Louisville showed up well in some hustle stats. It outrebounded Syracuse 40-21. It outscored the Orange 23-3 on second-chance points. It dished out 15 assists. But Syracuse overwhelmed Louisville on the fast break, outscoring the Cardinals 33-6. Louisville also was plagued with turnovers, giving up 17 of them, many of them live-ball turnovers, which Syracuse cashed in for 23 points.
But it did not get stops. Syracuse scored on 61 percent of its possessions. Chris Bell scored 30 points for the Orange, on 8-of-10 shooting from three-point range, most of them open.
The defense marred another solid offensive performance from the Cards, who shot 54 percent themselves, 44 percent (11 of 25) from three-point range.
Payne said the coaches have been stressing defense in practice, but aren't seeing results on the court.
"We keep drilling on defense. We keep working on it. We keep telling them the importance of defending," Payne said. "We can't stop doing it. We have to emphasize it. We have to discipline guys when they don't do what they're supposed to do, don't fight through a possession or open up and give a guy a driving lane to the basket. We work on that every day."
Brandon Huntley-Hatfield led the Cards with 19 points and 13 rebounds. Tre White added 17 points and 12 rebounds.
Louisville led by six with just under 6:00 to play, but foul trouble hurt the Cards late. Ty-Laur Johnson fouled out with Louisville down three and 2:25 to play when he jumped into J.J. Starling shooting a three. He made all three to put Syracuse up 87-81, but Louisville kept on battling.
A three-pointer by Skyy Clark with five seconds left tied the score at 92. But Syracuse took right off, driving the ball down the court for a Quadir Copeland layup that Kaleb Glenn appeared to block from behind. Officials called goaltending, and upheld the call after looking at video.
"They told me it was definitely a goal-tend," Payne said after the game, when asked what explanation the officials gave.
With 3.8 seconds left, Clark drove the ball up the court and used a Huntley-Hatfield screen to get a good look from three, but missed badly to the right.
"I thought we did some good things," Payne said. "But I also thought that we made some mistakes. I thought that on the three that Skyy made (that pulled Louisville within one with 1:09 left), I haven't seen it fully on tape yet, but we come down and we celebrate instead of sprinting back and getting a stop. We have to make sure that that everything that we're doing down the stretch of games are tight, and that's just the reality of it. We played good enough to win. That was progress made from from last game to this game as far as down the stretch, not playing to lose. This was more of a situation where we were playing to win. And we made big plays, we got big offensive rebounds. That's how we've got to play. But we have to be smarter. We've got to make sure we're not fouling shooters."
The loss drops Louisville to 7-16, and 2-10 in ACC play. The Cards will face Georgia Tech back in the KFC Yum! Center on Saturday.
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