By: Sam Draut

No. 12 Louisville bounced back from consecutive losses and defeated Miami 55-53 on Saturday afternoon at the KFC YUM! Center.

Montrezl Harrell registered his 22nd career double-double with 21 points and 14 rebounds.

Chris Jones added 17 points and five rebounds.

The Cardinals (21-6) had dropped three of their past four games and quickly fell behind the Hurricanes 19-6 eight minutes into the first half.

Miami (17-10) went into halftime leading 29-19 based in part from Louisville’s abysmal 7 of 29 shooting from the field.

“The reason we got off to such a bad start, I haven’t seen our guys do this on every drive to the basket, including Montrezl, we were trying to lean into the guy to draw the foul, and it was taking us out of our offensive rhythm by doing that,” Louisville head coach Rick Pitino said. “Then, when you have a start like that, the guys start to panic and they don’t want to shoot.”

Louisville charged out to a 15-3 run in the first five and a half minutes of the second half taking a four point lead.  The rest of the game remained a one possession battle until the final buzzer.

Miami led 53-50 with 1:37 left before Wayne Blackshear made a floater in the lane to cut the deficit to one.

Blackshear responded from his poor performance Wednesday night with 10 points, three rebounds and two assists.

“I just keep telling Wayne more and more, `drive to the basket, drive to the basket,” Pitino said.  “You’ll have big nights when you drive to the basket.’ And he’s doing a better job of that.”

After the Blackshear score, the Cardinal defense held the score at 53-52 when Terry Rozier deflected Deandre Burnett’s pass and was recovered by Harrell.

Pitino called a timeout, setting up a Jones’ drive to the basket and pass to Harrell.

Harrell was fouled on his layup attempt and then knocked down two free throws to give Louisville a 54-53 lead.

Pitino has been critical of the Cardinal’s defense throughout the year, but he said the team finally tallied 35 deflections, Rozier’s coming in the biggest moment.

“We needed the deflections tonight because our defense had to win it for us,” Pitino said.

Louisville will face Georgia Tech on Monday night.