By Russ Brown
Special to NKyTribune
LOUISVILLE — The University of Louisville basketball team found out what life would be like offensively without the unexpected gift of fifth-year senior transfers Damion Lee and Trey Lewis.
Oh, Lee and Lewis were on the court for No. 16 UofL’s ACC game against Clemson in Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C., Sunday afternoon. It’s just that they may as well not have been.
The Cardinals’ two leading scorers were a combined 5-of-31 from the field, including 1-for-18 from 3-point range, as UofL suddenly morphed into last year’s offensively-challenged group in a 66-62 upset loss.
Actually, it’s amazing the final score was that close considering that the Cards (13-3, 2-1) shot a miserable 35.3 percent, hit a mere 3-of-23 treys and sent the Tigers to the foul line for 44 free throws.
Lewis, who went into the game shooting 48 percent, scored 10 points, but hit just 3-of-19 shots and missed 10-of-11 from behind the arc. Lee was 3-of-19 and 0-for-7 while scoring a season-low six points.
Louisville missed its first 16 3-pointers, by which time it trailed 54-43, before Lewis finally made one from the left wing with 3:38 remaining.
For most of the afternoon, the Cards’ offense looked disjointed and inept, much like it did in 2015, as the Tigers’ man-to-man defense dominated.
Clemson (10-6, 3-1) shot even worse, at 32.6 percent, but it didn’t matter because the Tigers lived at the foul line, sinking 32 of their 44 free throws to UofL’s 11-of-16.
But UofL coach Rick Pitino had no complaints about the officiating or the free throw disparity, saying that Clemson took a page out of Kentucky’s book from its 75-73 win and got physical with the Cards. He noted that lightweights, forward Ray Spalding (6-10, 210) and center Anas Mahmoud (7-0, 210), in particular, were pushed around.
“They played us like Kentucky,” Pitino said on his post-game radio show. “They went to the old rules, they didn’t care about the new rules. They played smashmouth basketball, fouled us, grabbed us. They felt that was our weakness because of Spalding and Anas and so on, and Damion Lee as well.
“He tried to outrun the screens rather than set up screens. We knew they were gonna do that and we got what we deserved because we couldn’t match their physicality. We can’t complain about the way the game is called, it was both ways, and you’ve just got to play that way.”
Louisville’s most effective player was center Chinanu Onuaku, with 14 points on 7-of-8 shooting and 10 rebounds, but he was limited to 20 minutes due to foul trouble and fouled out with 2:13 remaining.
Clemson, beating a ranked ACC team for the first time in 11 years, never trailed in the second half and led by as many as 14 points, 47-33, with 9:22 left.
The Cards missed their first 16 3-pointers before hitting three in the final 3:38 — one each by Lewis, Quentin Snider and Jaylen Johnson — to trim an 11-point deficit, 54-43, to two at 64-62 with 5.5 seconds remaining.
Avry Holmes then made two free throws to seal the win. Clemson missed four consecutive free throws to open the door to UofL’s late surge, then hit eight in a row and 12 of its last 14. Junior forward Jason Blossomgame led the Tigers with 17 points, along with nine rebounds, three blocks and three steals.
Not surprisingly, given his emphasis on defense, Pitino blamed the loss on that facet of the game rather than on the Cards’ out-of-synch offense. Pitino had said often that his team was winning with offense, and the Cards went into the game as one of the nation’s leaders in field goal percentage at 50.8. But Sunday they looked like one of the worst.
“Like I told the team at halftime, there’s gonna be nights you don’t shoot well and your defense has to carry over,” Pitino said. “You can say (Clemson) shot 32 percent, but that’s a misleading stat because they shot 44 free throws, so we weren’t playing good defense.
“I said to them, ‘Now I’m gonna tell you, last year’s team could win this game because they were a great defensive team and you guys aren’t. So keep relying on your offense and if you make the NCAAs you get knocked out in the second round. So it was lesson learned. Our team needed to get knocked down a few pegs and get a little realistic about their abilities, and they did today.”
After back-to-back road games, Louisville will now play two straight home games, with nearly a one-week break between them. The Cards will host No. 24/21 Pittsburgh (14-1, 3-0) Thursday and Florida State (10-5, 0-3) on Jan. 28.
The Panthers are one of only four teams still unbeaten in ACC play after the first full week of the league season. The others are North Carolina (4-0), Duke (3-0) and Miami (2-0), none of whom UofL will face until next month.
“We’ve got to understand we’ve got to win our home games, not gonna be easy to do,” Pitino said. “I don’t want the fans to get discouraged with this loss and I certainly don’t want them to get carried away. This is not last year’s team, I’ve said that all along. We were a great defensive team last year; we’ve got to get our defense much, much better.”
