The narrative that Pat Kelsey’s Louisville teams are susceptible to being bullied by more physical opposition isn’t going away. Not after an 83-62 thumping at the hands of big, bad Tennessee Tuesday night in Knoxville.
The Cardinals, playing without star freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr., looked out of sorts from start to finish during their second straight whoopin’ at the hands of the Vols.
Pat Kelsey’s team got 22 points from Ryan Conwell, a season-high 19 points from Adrian Wooley (who made his
first U of L start) … and virtually nothing from anybody else. The other eight players who saw the floor for Louisville combined for just 21 points on nine made field goals. Tennessee outscored its visitors 34-3 in bench points.
The shooting was bad — 38% from the field and 21% from three.
The defense was bad — Tennessee shot 55% from the field and got essentially whatever it wanted around the rim.
The turnovers were unforgivable — Sixteen of them, several unforced, which is inexcusable even without your starting point guard.
It was essentially the Arkansas game all over again, except without any sort of second half rally.
This was always going to be a tough spot for Louisville to win, and it was made even tougher by Brown’s last second scratch, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for criticism here.
Adrian Wooley getting jolt of confidence after playing so well in a spot where more was asked of him is about the only non-discouraging thing that happened in Knoxville.
Sananda Fru had nothing for Felix Okpara or J.P. Estrella. Louisville’s trio of power forwards — J’Vonne Hadley, Khani Rooths and Kasean Pryor — accomplished virtually nothing productive. The only true scoring guard Tennessee has was allowed to score 23 points and get to the free-throw line 10 times. Isaac McKneely was repeatedly targeted on defense and hit just 2-of-10 shots on the other end. Kobe Rodgers, for the first time this season, looked like a player struggling to adjust to power conference basketball.
There’s no other way to put it: It was a remarkably disappointing evening at just about every level.
