LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Let’s just say it’s a bad matchup. A really bad matchup. I’m not talking about oil and water. I’m talking about oil and a blow torch.
That’s how it feels lately whenever Louisville faces Florida State, which has perhaps become the most under-respected team in the Atlantic Coast Conference in recent years.
Florida State on Monday night bolted to a 24-point lead in the KFC Yum! Center and made its case (rather emphatically) for Top 25 inclusion with an easier-than-it-looked 78-65 victory over the Cardinals.
And Louisville? Well, I don’t know what case it made. Sure, it was playing off a quick turnaround, having played Saturday night at Miami. But Florida State played Saturday, too, then flew to Louisville on Sunday.
“It is fairly obvious that we got punked from the beginning of the game," Louisville coach Chris Mack said. "Hats off to Florida State. They are a terrific team. They are a team that has a lot of answers at a lot of positions. They play extremely hard. We weren’t who we needed to be to start the game. We really weren’t for the first 13-15 minutes. I am disappointed. We have a lot of growing up to do in order to match that type of intensity to compete at this level with some of the teams we are playing. We have a lot of work to do.”
Chalk it up to whatever you want, but chalk up a second straight loss for Louisville, which finished a stretch of three games in five days looking tired.
The numbers don’t look so bad. Rebounds, even. Points in the paint, even. Turnovers, even. Fast-break points, even. Statistically, the difference was that FSU shot 50% from the field and outscored Louisville by 15 from the 3-point line.
But on the court, it didn’t look even. Florida State looked bigger, faster and stronger. It shot the ball better and got the shots it wanted.
M.J. Walker dished out more assists (10) than Louisville’s whole team (six).
Leading 40-16 before the final TV timeout of the first half, Florida State must’ve felt like it had things pretty well wrapped up. Only a 12-2 run by Louisville to finish the half kept the Cardinals from their worst home-court halftime deficit in 25 years. (That was against Charlotte in Freedom Hall. I believe I had that game. Bobby Lutz was hell on the Cardinals for a while.)
It was about that time that I crowd-sourced some thoughts from the viewing public, from that most reputable of social media outlets – Twitter.
The winning responses:
“This sucks.”
“Since when does Louisville have gold on its uniforms? Change at halftime.”
“The Bachelor will be on soon.”
“Butch Beard wanted statues. He got five of them.”
Thanks to you all for playing. There are no prizes. I also turned to someone a bit closer to the situation – point guard Carlik Jones. He led the Cardinals with 17 points, had half of their 6 assists and 2 of their 3 steals.
His assessment – Louisville just wasn’t ready to play. Period.
“It was a rough start for us for sure,” he said. “But I just think they wanted the game more. I think that’s what it really came down to. It was a huge challenge for us, but I don’t think we came ready to play, and they took advantage of that. If we played like we played in the last 4 minutes of the half the whole game, it would’ve been a different outcome.”
But why, in his estimation would Louisville come out flat? Starts of games have been a problem before.
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Jones said. “A lot of people can say that the quick turnaround is a reason. To me, that’s an excuse. That’s not acceptable. We as a team need to get it together. During wins and losses, we get off to slow stars. We need to stop putting ourselves in that situation. Teams in our conference are good. You put yourself in a hole against a team like Florida State, you’re going to have a tough game.”
“That’s a question we’re trying to find out as a team,” David Johnson chimed in. “We’ve been trying to figure it out for 2-3 weeks now. We’ve got to stop starting like that. Florida State just wanted it more ... We’ve just got to have heart ... It just comes down to who wants it more.”
Louisville did come back. It cut its deficit to 8, and had a chance to cut it to 6, but couldn’t covert, and Florida State pushed its lead back out. Over and over, Johnson kept saying the words, “They just wanted it more. They kept throwing multiple punches.”
After the game, Johnson said that coach Chris Mack told his players that they need to find their identity, that they don’t know who they are, that they haven’t played Louisville basketball the past 2 games, and that they need to get that back.
Mack, who let his team have it pretty good after its loss at Miami, took about 40 minutes to show up for his postgame Zoom interview. He spoke after Jones, and after Johnson. Still, he couldn’t put his finger on why his team is starting slow, but he did raise his hand to take responsibility.
“Put that on me," Mack said. "You get down by whatever you get down and you are not ready to play. How that is, I have no idea. We fumbled the ball around the basket and missed layups that we had created. We set the tone at such a poor way of playing intimidated. If you get bullied by Florida State early on, that is a problem because you are going to get bullied for 40 minutes. We responded but we got down too deep in a hole.”
Clearly, there were some effort areas that irked Mack. He didn’t like his team not sprinting the court in transition, for one.
“We didn't set the right tone," Mack said. "The defense that we played was soft, we gave up way too many easy open jump shots. It doesn’t take a whole lot of talent to sprint your ass back to find your man and get matched up to make it a 5-on-5 game. Whether we are young, inexperienced or intimidated I don’t know but sh-t needs to get corrected."
Mack said he would anticipate fan frustration after the loss, and acknowledge that the coaches share that frustration, and a strong desire to correct matters.
“For a fan, you’re like, ‘What the hell is the problem? Why aren’t we ready to play?’ That’s what our coaching staff is saying. We’re going to do everything that we can to fix the damn problem. But when we come out and don’t understand how to get in the lane, how to be strong with the basketball, and then get back on the other end and get matched up, that doesn’t have anything to do with talent. That has everything to do with toughness, and it being important to us. And we’re going to have to figure that out. If we don’t, then we’ll have more nights like tonight.”
Copyright 2021 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
