KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WDRB) -- Louisville brought hard hats to Tennessee. The Volunteers brought a sledgehammer.
After a loss at Arkansas in which he felt his team didn’t respond well to physical play, Louisville coach Pat Kelsey handed out hard hats to his players.
The message? His team would become more blue-collar. Tougher. More hard-nosed.
After one night in Knoxville, against a Tennessee team that has typified those traits for years under coach Rick Barnes, the hard hats perhaps symbolize something else.
Still under construction.
Final: Tennessee 83, Louisville 62.
This looked less like a building site and more like a demolition zone.
It was supposed to be a statement — a team toughening up after a bruising loss and a hard lesson. Instead, Kelsey may need to go back to the blueprints. Even with talented freshman Mikel Brown sidelined by a back injury, it’s hard to say his presence would’ve changed much. And with two straight road losses to high-level teams, this is starting to feel like more than coincidence.
A solution is needed.
Tennessee didn’t so much play a game as lay down blacktop. The Vols, coming off a week of rest and a streak of road-rage losses, took one look at the Cardinals and knocked them sideways. The only blue-collar thing about this night was the bruises.
Louisville couldn’t shoot. Couldn’t pass. Couldn’t score unless someone forgot to lock the back door. A team built on tempo and threes was reduced to trying to chisel points out of stone with a plastic spoon.
The nation’s No. 5 assist team finished with only eight. One of the top scoring teams in college basketball barely cracked 60 and never strung together a run of more than five points. Only two players — Ryan Conwell with 22 and Adrian Wooley with 19 — reached double figures. J’Vonne Hadley had nine. No one else had more than five.
Louisville shot just 38 percent, and 21 percent (7-of-34) from three. Tennessee, by contrast, hit 7-of-18 from deep and shot 55 percent from the field.
The first half was close enough to suggest suspense. The second half played out like a bank foreclosure. Three straight threes from three different Vols blew the roof off, and what had been a respectable gap turned into a crater.
Louisville’s shot chart could’ve been drawn by a blindfolded man in a wind tunnel. The looks weren’t bad. They just weren’t allowed. Even the open ones had fingerprints on them.
Sometimes, especially on the road against ranked teams, if you’re a three-point shooting team, you need to make threes. Louisville couldn’t manage it. Isaac McKneely missed his first seven from beyond the arc and went 2-for-10 overall. One game after six Cardinals connected from deep, only three did on Tuesday — and one of those makes came from McKneely long after the outcome was decided.
Tennessee’s largest lead was 25. Ja’Kobi Gillespie, scoreless in the first half, poured in 20 of his game-high 23 after halftime. Nate Ament, a 6-10 freshman who chose Tennessee over Louisville and others, took on the defensive assignment of McKneely and added 13 points and seven rebounds.
Tennessee outscored Louisville 21-8 off turnovers and, perhaps most remarkably, 34-3 off the bench.
And so, the Cardinals leave Knoxville with their hard hats dented, their egos bruised, and a growing suspicion that the toughness rebuild is going to take a little more work.
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