The Louisville Cardinals were defeated by Chattanooga last night, 81-71, a blowout loss by ten points. Not much more can be said than what was said during the entire previous season.
Prior to the game, the Cardinals were favored by -3.5, and all Cardinal supporters realized this would be a difficult game as soon as the first media timeout aired. The truth is that Louisville shouldn’t have a difficult time winning at home against Chattanooga. Things weren’t that bad, not even in the final year of the Chris Mack administration. Mack handled these smaller schools with ease, and he never had any trouble with teams like Chattanooga. Since 1972, Louisville had not dropped a home game in the month of November.
The Cardinals trailed Chattanooga by 21 at one point in the second half. The problem lies in the fact that the phrase “being down to Chattanooga by 21 in the 2nd half” is used at all.
The final four minutes of the game were the only period in which the Cards appeared to get going. During that time, they began to cut the lead, sometimes to just one digit (I know, crazy). Payne’s team appeared to be vastly outmatched in talent and never gave the impression that they wanted to be there—rather, they were just outworked. The disappointing thing is that even after Payne changed the entire roster and brought in a top 6 recruiting class, everything remained the same.
Despite being a much larger team, Louisville tied Chattanooga with 41 total rebounds, which is very disappointing. Additionally, the Cardinals made 65% of their free throws and shot 33% from beyond the field. which is hardly better than the 61% from Monday’s game against UMBC.
