By Harry Barsan

No. 6 Louisville surged past the NJIT Highlanders for yet again another 100+ point performance.

Make it rain

Louisville won the tip, and immediately cashed in with an early three from Ryan Conwell.

The Cardinals looked quite comfortable from deep, with five of their first seven field goals coming from long range.

Isaac McKneely shot and made three straight triples, spanning the course of just over three minutes.

Zougris Vangelis took just five seconds after subbing in to grab a slam dunk for his first bucket to give the Cards a 20-point lead.

Since it wasn’t broken, the Cards didn’t fix it. Conwell pulled up from deep for his third time of the half, paving the way for Adrian Wooley to do just the same.

Louisville showed no mercy, denying the Highlanders’ two-for-one attempt by forcing a turnover. Conwell nailed the coffin with a three to put the half to rest.

At the break, the Cardinals stood atop 52-20.

Treasure time

Sananda Fru found an easy look in the paint for an early dunk, courtesy of a Conwell assist.

These two guys lit up the scoreboard early, assisting or scoring on the Cardinals’ first five buckets of the half.

Conwell’s sixth three gave him 20 with plenty of clock to go, and only four shy of NJIT’s team mark at that point in the game.

Despite some shooting struggles in this game, Mikel Brown Jr. finally got a shot to go as he grabbed his second three of the night. Toss in another on the next possession, and another from Conwell and the lead grew to 50.

Wooley had the honors on a fast break layup to give us our fourth 100 point performance on the year.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. While some would call it garbage time, I would say it was treasure time for Spencer Legg, who logged his first field goal on the season in the final seconds of this game.

The Cardinals won 104-47.

Shoot around

Wire-to-wire, buzzer-to-buzzer, everything looked in its right place. 

On 58 shots, NJIT was held to just 18 makes.

Add that to only four free throws and you get exactly the offensive struggle the Cardinal defense forced tonight. Zero NJIT players scored double-digits.

Meanwhile, the Cards had a record night in a number of respects.

On top of beating the Highlanders in their first-ever meeting, Louisville set a record for the largest rebounding margin in program-history with 38 more boards than NJIT.

Also a season-high, the Cardinals grabbed 20 offensive boards leading to 21 second-chance points.

Louisville has their most threes of the season with 20, 11 of which game in the first half. 41.7% from deep is five points higher than their already high season average of 36%.

The Cards also put up an awesome 1.51 points per possession.

Conwell gave a career performance, making a career-high eight threes as he had 32 on the night. He only scored 30 points twice last season at Xavier.

Not to be outdone himself, McKneely had a great night shooting 5-for-10 from three.

While he only scored once in the first half and thrice total, Brown still earned his minutes on offense. He and his seven assists gave Conwell the goods to put together such an impressive performance.

Louisville is now 7-0 on the season.

The Cardinals’ next test will be on the road against the No. 22 Arkansas Razorbacks on Dec. 3.

Photo by Jai’Michael Anderson / The Louisville Cardinal