DURHAM, N.C. – Taking on Duke in their final true road game of the season, the Louisville’s men’s basketball program once again came up short in spectacular fashion, falling 84-59 to secure back-to-back 20-loss seasons.
Here’s what head coach Kenny Payne had to say following the loss:
Head Coach Kenny Payne
(Opening statement)
Coming in here playing, in this arena, in this stadium, I think you know you have to walk in here with a toughness, with a fight, with a resilience to to know who you’re playing against. To know how hard it is to come in here and get wins. Very rarely happens. Top-10 team. So when you walk into this building, and you’re ready to play a team like this, there’s a fight that’s required. That fight means, for 40 minutes, you don’t have to be perfect, but you better be disciplined. You better be tough, you better be resilient in how you handle things, and you better be precise and how you want to play offense.
With that said, we came in here and we talked about the big key to the game: rebound. They beat us 24 to 43. You can’t beat this team if you’re not going to rebound. We came in this game, based off our first game how we moved the ball and we caused them problems, moving the ball and attacking the lane. It took them a half to sort of figure that out. We talked about defensively being solid, creating and making them miss shots, because they got good shooters and they score in bunches. They got a bunch of guys that can really score the ball, and they are a very good passing team. Well, they had 23 assists to our 11 assists. A good offensive team, that’s what they do. Everybody passes the ball and you create havoc, and that’s what they did to us today.