By Russ Brown
NKyTribune correspondent
LOUISVILLE — Well, that was quite a turnaround in 48 hours. A Clark Kent to Superman performance, minus the phone booth.
After staggering to its worst performance of the season in a 63-47 loss to Virginia Saturday afternoon, the University of Louisville basketball team quickly regrouped and stunned North Carolina — No. 1 in the AP poll and No. 2 in the coaches voting –71-65 Monday night in front of 22,781 delirious fans in the KFC Yum! Center and an ESPN audience.
Big Monday indeed.
Avoiding their first back-to-back defeats at home since 2012, the No. 19/18 Cardinals (18-4,7-2) outplayed the ACC-leading Tar Heels (19-3, 8-1) in virtually every area in snapping the visitors’ 12-game winning streak.
It was UofL’s first win over a top-ranked team in either poll since the Kyle Kuric-led 78-68 upset of Syracuse in the final game in Freedom Hall in 2010.
“It was a great atmosphere and a great game,” UofL coach Rick Pitino said. “We didn’t really get upset with them, as we normally do after a bad performance. I told the guys, ‘I know you’re disappointed, but when adversity hits and you’re on the mat, you won’t be judged by how you fell, but how you get up. They got up big time and I’m real proud of them.”
No Cardinal rose to the occasion more than senior wing Damion Lee, who had scored a mere six points against Virginia while missing all four of his 3-pointers. But UofL’s leading scorer returned to form against UNC. He scored a game-high 24 points, hit 4-of-7 treys and 8-of-12 shots overall.
“He’s a big-time basketball player and a big-time scorer,” Pitino said.
Lee also had five rebounds and was the only player on either team to log all 40 minutes.
“Coach really challenged us after the game, yesterday and today,” Lee said. “Our main thing was just to respond and come out and play as hard as we can and if we followed the game plan, we were confident we would come out with the victory.
“Redemption was a big thing with us. Our last home game was the worst basketball we’ve ever played the whole season and we knew we had to have more intensity and bounce back.”
Lee wasted no time setting the tone for the game, hitting a ferocious driving dunk on Louisville’s first possession, and his teammates took it from there. They brought the Heels’ vaunted fast break to a screeching halt, outscored them in the paint 36-28 and outhustled them for a 17-7 advantage in second-chance points.
“It was a tough night for the guys in blue,” UNC coach Roy Williams said. “It was a very hard-fought game and their sense of urgency was a little better than ours. They had more fire in their belly. We didn’t get a single fast break in the first half, and that’s a big part of our offense.”
Without its transition game, the Heels struggled to get the ball in the basket as they have for most of the ACC season, shooting just 34.5 percent — their fourth game in the last five under 40 percent.
They were 3-of-17 from 3-point range and the two starting guards, Joel Berry II and Marcus Paige, missed 19-of-23 shots. So Brice Johnson, with a double-double of 15 points and 11 rebounds, and Justin Jackson, with 16 points, had little support from UNC’s perimeter players. North Carolina came into the game averaging an ACC-best 83.8 points.
“They do so many things well that they’re a really difficult team to prepare for in a week, never mind in a day,” Pition said. “But our guys were so disappointed — I won’t say embarrassed — with the Virginia game that they really focused in on the game plan.”
Besides Lee, UofL got solid performances from Chinanu Onuaku, Donovan Mitchell, Trey Lewis and Quentin Snider. Onuaku had a double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds despite playing only 23 minutes due to foul trouble. Mitchell got 10 points and five boards off the bench, Lewis added nine points and four rebounds, and Snider offset 2-of-11 shooting with seven assists and just one turnover in 36 minutes.
Lesser, but important, contributions were provided by reserves Ray Spalding (4 points, 5 rebounds) and Anas Mahmoud (4 points, 4 rebounds).
No more than three or four points separated the two teams most of the evening until the Cards opened a 63-55 lead on Onuaku’s 3-point play with 5:15 remaining after Mitchell had given them the lead for good at 47-45 with a 15-footer at the 12:05 mark.
But the Heels made it interesting down the stretch, pulling to within 67-65 on Berry’s two free throws with 42.6 seconds remaining. Then Lewis hit a pair of foul shots at 0:26 and when UNC missed three close-in shots on its ensuing possession and Onuaku finally grabbed the rebound, it was over and the Cards could finally exhale.
“It feels great to get that win, especially bouncing back,” Lewis said. “And I want to give a lot of credit to my teammates for responding how we did today.”
Any doubts?
“Not at all,” he said. “I woke up this morning knowing we were going to win this game. I know the type of guys we have in this locker room. We’re competitors and when something happens like what happened last game I knew we were gonna respond the right way. We felt we got out-toughed last game, and that’s something that can’t happen in this house.”
The house was restored to order Monday night, and now UofL will be heavily favored to end its three-game homestand successfully against woeful Boston College (7-14, 0-8) at noon Saturday.