No. 20 Louisville regroups after rout, hosts surging SMU
No. 20 Louisville looks to bounce back from its worst loss under second-year coach Pat Kelsey when it hosts a surging SMU squad on Saturday afternoon.
The Cardinals (14-6, 4-4 Atlantic Coast Conference) fell 83-52 at No. 4 Duke on Monday night, while the Mustangs (15-5, 4-3) have been idle since winning for the third time in four games last Saturday against visiting Florida State.
Freshman star Mikel Brown Jr., playing in just his second game after missing eight contests with a back injury, made only one of 13 shots in the lopsided loss at Duke as Louisville shot 29.6% (16 of 54) as a team. Ryan Conwell paced the Cardinals with 18 points and J'Vonne Hadley added 11.
The Blue Devils outrebounded the Cardinals 47-26 and outscored them 42-10 inside the paint.
"We got our butt kicked," Kelsey said. "Every metric that you would look at speaks to a butt-kicking."
"All we can do is dust ourselves off, run back to work, and use this as something that helps us get better," he added.
Conwell leads Louisville with 19.4 points per game and Brown adds 16.1 per game. Isaac McKneely (11.5), Hadley (10.8) and Sananda Fru (10.6) are also scoring in double figures.
Duke makes a lot of teams look bad, so Kelsey looked toward the SMU game as "an opportunity."
"You get your butt whooped and you're on the ground, you've got to freaking get up and fight," he said.
SMU's veteran backcourt continues to provide production for second-year coach Andy Enfield.
The Mustangs held on for an 83-80 win over the Seminoles in their last appearance. SMU led 46-34 at halftime but had to weather a 16-3 FSU run to open the second half and then battled back and forth to the buzzer, hanging on with clutch baskets and made free throws.
"The advantage of having experienced players, especially three guards, they've been there many games and our team has been very good in close games this year," Enfield said. "The margin of error is so small in this league, especially when you get into January and February league play. That's one possession, two possessions most games."
Senior Jaron Pierre Jr. scored 28 points, connecting on four of 10 3-pointers and grabbing five rebounds. Fellow senior guard B.J. Edwards tallied 19 points, including three treys, with nine boards and five assists. Top scorer and junior Boopie Miller added 11 points on 3-for-12 shooting but handed out six assists.
That veteran trio has scored more than 57% of SMU's points this season, and the Mustangs rank 18th nationally with 87.3 points per game. Those guards also have compiled more than 74% of the Mustangs' assists.
The victory against Florida State was Enfield's 300th as a head coach. The former Florida Gulf Coast and Southern California boss downplayed the achievement.
"I didn't even know it was 300 until someone told me after the game," Enfield said, adding that he "would not be here with 300 wins as a head coach without an incredible coaching staff."