By Derek DeBurger

Despite the opportunity to make a splash early in the season, Louisville let one slip against the Indiana Hoosiers on Monday afternoon.

A simple momentum change

After a good start to the game, Louisville fell cold shooting the ball and found themselves down 10 points right before the half. A quick spurt by the Card’s offense cut the lead to five going into the half.

Coming out of the locker rooms the Cards were once again flat as the Hoosiers pushed the lead back up to nine, but a simple substitution changed everything.

New York native Ty-Laur Johnson brought urgency to the offense and a swagger to the defense that saw the Cards go on a 17-to-three run to take a four-point lead. Johnson put on a show for his hometown crowd running the offense smoothly and getting his teammates involved so the Indiana defense couldn’t focus on one player. Johnson finished the game with four of Louisville’s nine assists, and proved to be one of the best sparks the team felt all night.

With all the momentum, and then some, Louisville was able to push the score to 60-53 for a seven-point lead with just under eight minutes left in the game. From there the wheels fell off.

Johnson and forward Kaleb Glenn were subbed out of the game, and, more importantly, head coach Mike Woodson switched from man-to-man to a two-three zone. Louisville had no answer whatsoever for the zone defense, failing to attack/pass inside the middle to split the zone, instead just opting to pass the ball back and forth along the perimeter until they were forced to jack up a shot at the end of the shot clock. By the time head coach Kenny Payne put Johnson back into the game, it was too little too late.

Indiana closed out the game on a 21-to-six run to put the game away handily.

The Hoosiers won 74-66.

Some hope?

As Louisville finished the Empire Classic in fourth place, there’s a shocking amount of optimism that can be gleaned from these games.

Louisville played hard — the hardest they have since Mike Pegues was named the interim coach in 2022. Louisville played two talented teams and showed that they can compete at that level. Both Indiana and Texas were tournament teams last year, and there were times in both games were Louisville looked like they were the clear superior team. The biggest question is: will they keep up the intensity?

Skyy Clark played great, scoring a game-high 19 points, and the offense looked fantastic when both he and Johnson were on the court at the same time. Brandon Huntley-Hatfield continued to look night and day compared to last season, doing the dirty work of playing tough defense and bringing down rebounds. Huntley-Hatfield had a game-high nine rebounds.

Sitting at 2-3 on the year, Louisville might have a lot of things to work on, but they can compete with anyone if they just out-hustle their opponents. The key to the rest of the season is clear, now we just need to see the Cards go out and compete.

Photo Courtesy // Adam Creech, Louisville Athletics