By Derek DeBurger
Louisville certainly fought but ultimately fell short on the road against the Syracuse Orange.
With Ty-Laur Johnson replacing Skyy Clark in the starting lineup following his historic performance, the offense came out humming. Louisville blazed out to a 9-2 lead with Johnson feasting off double-teams from the Orange. After an early timeout, Syracuse switched to a zone defense and successfully stifled the Cards’ offense, propelling Syracuse to a 14-2 run.
After the Cards found themselves down five, they began to attack the zone more systematically, finding Mike James and Brandon Huntley-Hatfield inside to manipulate the zone to find open players. Louisville was able to right the ship and virtually play shot-for-shot with the Orange. Unfortunately, the Cards couldn’t stop the Orange from scoring so a shootout was necessary—Louisville shot 58% from the field in the first half and Syracuse shot 61%.
Halftime was Syracuse up, 49-45.
The Cards felt unstoppable offensively, but couldn’t stop a nosebleed on defense.
Syracuse had a definite strategy in guarding Louisville—win the transition game at all costs. Louisville dominated the boards, but a huge part of that domination was the Orange’s willingness to forgo lining up for the rebound to stop fastbreaks. On the other end of the ball, Syracuse dominated in points in transition and turnovers with 33 and 23 points respectively.
As the game drew closer to an end, the Cards grew deeper in foul trouble. Johnson fouled out of the game on a bad shooting foul with 2:25 left that put Syracuse up by six—their biggest lead of the game. James fouled out a minute later. Johnson and James both played huge parts; Johnson scored nine points and dropped six assists and James contributed 12 points.
With limited options, Clark took the lead of the offense scoring eight points in the final minute-and-a-half, including a fadeaway three-pointer to tie the game at 92-92. Immediately following the three, Judah Mintz broke out on a fastbreak off the inbound pass and attempted a layup that Kaleb Glenn blocked. The block, however, was called a goaltend on the court, and was confirmed after a review.
With 3.8 seconds left on the clock, Clark got to the three-point line to attempt a game-winner, but the shot came up short.
Louisville would lose 92-94.
Louisville as a team got great individual performances on offense, especially against a strong defense. The problem was that Louisville also played terrible defense against a sub-par offense. Syracuse ended the game shooting 60.8% from the field, and it could’ve been worse as the Orange missed 11 free throw attempts. Chris Bell scored 30 points and hit eight threes, and the Cards never meaningfully adjusted to stop him.
The short bench out of necessity ended up being a good thing for head coach Kenny Payne, but it can and will just as easily play the heel for the Cards if they don’t start playing smart, better defense.
And if the Cards don’t play defense, I don’t know how many more games they expect to win.
Louisville falls to 7-16 on the season, 2-10 in the ACC, and 11-44 under coach Payne.
