Louisville basketball: Cardinals go one and done in ACC tourney

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Despite having the double bye, Rick Pitino and his Louisville basketball team were unable to win the season series over the North Carolina Tar Heels that would have projected the Cardinals to the semi-final round in the ACC tournament to play against the Virginia Cavaliers.

The boys in red by no means had a bad outing, they were just unable to hit the shots when they counted, with their last made field goal spanning back to the 2:03 mark to play.

Louisville Cardinals
Louisville Cardinals /

Louisville Cardinals

The Cardinals had the outstanding plays in today’s game, including #SCtop10 nominee alley-oop from

Quentin Snider

to

Montrezl Harrell

. However, the top play wasn’t an indicator of the Louisville offense as a whole. As expected, the Cardinals had a tough time spreading out the wealth, and were unable to get a sustained rhythm throughout the game, especially in the second half.

The Tar Heelers on the other hand did distribute their scoring among a total of eight players, with junior Brice Johnson leading the way with 22 points. North Carolina turned their game around coming out of halftime, and outscored the Cardinals by 15 points in the second sector of play. In the opening minutes of the second half, the Tar Heels bounced to a 9-2 run to get things started, setting their pace for the remainder of the outing.

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Louisville’s main contributors were

Terry Rozier

(20 points, 3 rebounds, 2 steals, and 2 assists),

Wayne Blackshear

(18 points, 3 rebounds, one steal), and Harrell with another double-double in under his name (14 points, 12 rebounds, one assist, one steal).

Cardinals fans will now have to wait until next week in order to see the boys in red play again, and until this Sunday to find out who the Cards will face next in the big tournament.

According to Joe Lunardi’s latest bracketology, Louisville is still a solid four seed looking to play 13 seed Georgia State in the round of 64. Lunardi even commented that with the loss to UNC, the Cardinals should still maintain that four seed standing.