By Russ Brown
NKyTribune correspondent
LOUISVILLE — Trey Lewis sat glumly in his stall in the quiet University of Louisville locker room Saturday afternoon and made a promise.
“We’re gonna focus in tomorrow, we’re gonna practice very hard, we’re gonna get our minds right, we’re gonna get our minds off this loss and we’re gonna go out there and be a much better team come Monday,” he said.
In all honesty, that’s a pretty safe pledge because there’s only one way for the No. 16/14 Cardinals (17-4, 6-2 ACC) to go after Virginia’s stunning scorched-earth 63-47 rout in the KFC Yum! Center.
After all, it would take a concentrated effort to be as bad as UofL was against the No. 11 Cavaliers, who were 6-point underdogs, but played like 20-point favorites. UofL was inept a both ends of the court. The Cards shot a season-low 32.7 percent, committed a season-high 18 turnovers and allowed Virginia to shoot 57.8 percent.
The Louisville starters accounted for just 20 points and five field goals. With 8:40 left in the first half, the Cards had a mere five points. Midway through the second half, Quentin Snider was the only starter with a field goal (he had two).
Adding insult to inury, the Cavaliers’ margin of victory was their largest on the road against a ranked team since they beat No. 24 Georgia Tech 83-60 on Feb. 22, 1995.
But now comes a chance for redemption in a big way against league-leading North Carolina (19-2, 8-0), which will come to town Monday night (7 p.m., ESPN) with a No. 1 or 2 ranking in both national polls, a 12-game winning streak and a history of success against UofL coach Rick Pitino, who is 1-4 against UNC’s Roy Williams since 2008.
“We’ve got one day to try to cure some of our ills,” Pitino said. “But with such an inexperienced team, it’s going to be difficult to do. We’ll be going against guys much more experienced and much more skilled in certain areas.”
After the Virginia game, the Cards were saying all the right things — about how they had to put that poor performance behind them, learn from their mistakes and bounce back against the Tar Heels. Easier said than done, of course.
Lewis, who was 1-of-6, scored just four points and drew Pitino’s ire for defensive lapses, said he was going to watch film of the game all night Saturday.
“We got our butts kicked and now we have a big game coming up, so it’s strap ’em up and play,” he said.
“We have fighters on this team,” freshman guard Donovan Mitchell said. “This is the toughest conference in the country and it’s what we signed up for when we came here. And I think if we just do what we’re meant to do, things will work out for us on Monday.”
Aside from the implications on the ACC race, UofL is badly in need of a marquee victory to enhance its NCAA Tournament resume’. The Cards are now 1-3 vs. Top 25 competition, having beaten only Pittsburgh. And they have only two wins against teams in the RPI top 50 — Pitt (32) and Florida State (44). Both at home.
Already, some are beginning to question whether Louisville’s weak non-conference schedule (ranked 301st by stats guru Ken Pomeroy) adequately prepared the young Cards for the level of competition they would face later.
“We’re just going to try to get better and better, make the tournament and see what happens in March,” Pitino says. “There’s no reason to get down in the dumps, because we are 6-2 (ACC) and 17-4. Now that can turn around in a hurry, so each win is going to be monumental for us. We have to put all our effort into that one victory.”
North Carolina took two of three from UofL last season, sandwiching a 78-68 overtime loss in the Yum! around victories at home (72-71) and in the ACC Tournament (70-60).
Pitino says the fast and athletic Tar Heels have the ability to exploit UofL’s major weakness, transition defense, much as Virginia Tech did in the Hokies 91-83 loss last week in which they scored on numerous run-outs before the Cards’ defense could get set.
“They’re very up and down,” UofL wing Damion Lee says. “They’re Virginia Tech on steroids. We can’t make the same mistakes we did the last two games and hope better offense wins it for us. If we do, the result will be the same as it was (vs. Virginia).”
North Carolina’s up-tempo style might actually be better-suited for UofL than Virginia’s deliberate pace. And while the Heels are unquestionably the most talented team in the ACC, they have had a tendency to blow sizeable leads and have struggled shooting.
After shooting at least 45 percent in its first 17 games, UNC failed to crack 40 percent in three straight against NC State, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech. Marcus Paige, the preseason ACC Player of the Year, was 5-of-35 (14 percent) and the other primary perimeter scorer, Justin Jackson, was 10-of-30 (30 percent).
The Heels rediscovered their shooting touch in an 89-62 win over Boston College Saturday when they shot 53.7 percent and Paige went 4-for-9 with a trio of 3-pointers. But that came against the worst team in the league, and Williams seemed unconvinced that the shooting woes were over.
“There’s no question we need to fix the shooting, because we’ve won some games because we had more talent,” Williams said. “But you’ve got to play better to win some games we’ve got coming up.
“I really do believe we’re going to make shots. We just haven’t been making them at the frequency I want us to make them. We have a bunch of games against teams in the top half of the league. If we play the way we played the last four games, it will be very, very difficult to win any of those.”
As ugly as Louisville’s offense was against Virginia, Pitino blamed the loss on the Cards’ poor defense. He was asked if the defensive problems could be fixed in time for the postseason tournaments in March.
“In a month?” he said. “Yes, we can fix it in a month. But I don’t know if we can fix it by Monday.”