LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Louisville men’s basketball program got off to a fast start against Duke, but couldn’t close out down the stretch, resulting in a 76-65 loss in their ACC opener.
Here’s what head coach Pat Kelsey, guard/forward Terrence Edwards Jr. and guard J’Vonne Hadley had to say following the loss:
(Opening Statement) “Give Duke a lot of credit. They’re a very, very good team. Coach Scheyer is doing an unbelievable job with them. They’re very talented, they’re very well-schooled. They have a very difficult system to guard with really, really good players. Have a lot of respect for their program and for Jon and his staff. You know, we got our butts kicked the other night against Ole Miss and really challenged our guys the last several days. We focus on, harp on and emphasize the daily process, the next thing being the most important thing and clean some stuff up from the Ole Miss game. We had a couple really good days of preparation. We just weren’t able to practice a lot. Going into the Ole Miss game, we hadn’t really had an actual practice since before we left for the Bahamas, because we came back, had a pretty short turnaround, had some guys banged up, so it was a lot of film and walk through. We just weren’t in the state to be able to practice. And after the Ole Miss game we had a four-day layoff. We were able to go back to our core principles and have true preseason practice. First two, we weren’t even focusing on our next opponent, it was just on us. And I was proud of our guys’ response. You know, we were up for the challenge tonight, came out played really well in the first half, but didn’t sustain it. The first half we held them to 36 percent from the field and 27 percent from three and then it was 55 percent in the second half. I think it’s a six-point game at the eight minute media (timeout). We were right there, we just needed a couple of stops and knock down a couple of big shots. We weren’t able to get stops, had some open looks and didn’t knock them down. You give Duke credit. They stepped up in the crucial part of the game and got some stops and made some really, really big shots. Disappointing how the second half went. Got a quick turnaround getting ready for a good UTEP team on Wednesday. Got to turn the page and go back to work tomorrow, clean this one up and start preparing for the next one.”
(What did he see from his team and Duke when that 18-2 second half run from Duke happened?) “Is that what it was, 18-2? Again, you have always to give your opponent credit and that part of the game, they really started to get it going. Banged in a couple of big shots, we tried to sort of stop the momentum, called a timeout. We got a pretty good look out of the timeout, didn’t go down and it just got away from us from there. But, still not guarding to our standard or to the level we need to defend. At the eight-minute media, we are still right there and even at the four-minute media, it’s a 10-point game at 70-60, I think Reyne (Smith) bangs a three, to cut it to within seven. Against a really, really good team like that, man, the margin for error is small. I felt like our turnovers were a big part of why we lost tonight. You can’t turn the ball over, fifteen times. We had ten assists, 15 turnovers. I think we turned it over on like 22 percent of our possessions. We want to be at 15% or less and against a good team like that, you can’t have that many empty possessions. But give Duke credit, they are a very, very good defensive team and a very good offensive team as well.
(About Chucky Hepburn, Reyne Smith and others playing 30+ minutes causing a fatigue factor) “I haven’t seen the analytics, statistics at the end of the game. At the Ole Miss game, we had 66 offensive possessions which puts us in the middle of the pack in the country. It is not a breakneck pace. I don’t know what the possessions were tonight. We are not playing as clapback, downhill on makes. We are doing somethings to slow the game down. Probably running more set plays that we normally have in the past. We have to allow our guys to get a – I don’t want to say ‘rest’ – but executing set plays makes the possessions go a little longer and makes the defense against us labor a bit. We are doing some things to change. We are not the same team we were two and a half weeks ago when we were playing 11 guys. Obviously, we were downhill, getting the ball rebounds, tilting the floor, attacking the basket. We definitely made some adjustments because of our rotations. Never, ever, ever make any excuses or give any explanations. It is what it is. The difficult thing has been practice. It is hard to practice because you can’t play traditional five-on-five. I am 49, I can still hoop and I am jumping in there sometimes. You just have to get really creative. The interesting thing about our team thing is every team is different, every season is different. The ups and downs, the good, the bad, the adversity of each season. It’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolate, you never know what you are going to get. We have been dealt a little bit of a tough hand with injuries and things like that. We are making adjustments on the fly, trying to figure out a new identity. I think our guys played their butts off. We didn’t guard up to our standards in the second half, but I am sure as heck not going to sit up here and say it was because we were tired. We got to be better. I am not going to make excuses.”
(About the fan base and the fans exploding) “We have the best fan base in the country. I don’t care what anybody says. I come from a city a few miles up the road. They talk about a lot of other things – the Bengals, the Reds, this and that. In this town they talk about Louisville basketball. It is part of the fabric of this community. It is in the DNA of the people that live in 5-0-2. We appreciate them. We appreciate them supporting us. We appreciate the energy that they brought tonight. We could feel it. We went on that run in the first half and jumped on them. I get it. People are ready to explode. I am ready to stinking explode. They were a big part of our momentum. I told our guys to put game pressure on Duke and we will get an eighth man. We say seven guys is what it takes to play defense. That is five guys giving more than just themselves. We are playing as hard as we need to be seven guys. When the Yum! Center gets rocking like that, it is eight. The fan base put pressure on Duke today. Big, big part of the success we had in the first 26 minutes of the game. We weren’t able to sustain it.”
(About Terrence Edwards giving a lift off the bench) “I thought Terrence (Edwards) gave us a great lift. He gave us a great boost to start the game, making shots and doing really well offensively in great bursts. Like everybody else, he needs to do a better job of making good decisions. I thought Terrence gave us an unbelievable spark offensively.
(On the transfer portal) “Everything’s on the table. I don’t sleep figuring out what buttons to push to get this team to be the best that they can be. We’ll scour every inch of the Earth to figure out how we can improve our team, and whether that happens or not, I have no idea. I’m willing to try anything. My major focus is on these young men on the roster and pouring into them every single day. We’re going to have an unbelievable day of preparation tomorrow coming off a game where our guys played a lot of minutes, so it won’t be much from a physical standpoint. We’ll have a really good practice on Tuesday. We have to be ready for a very well-coached and talented UTEP team on Wednesday.”
(On Terrence Edwards Jr. coming off the bench) “There was no big reason. Just trying to figure out what buttons to push to get our team going. The media, fans, other people put way more importance and emphasis on a starting lineup. James Scott has started every single game since the Bahamas when Kasean (Pryor) got hurt, so James went into the starting lineup. James is one the most accountable players I’ve ever coached and he was six seconds late to a walkthrough. Six seconds. ‘That’s fine, you’re out of the starting lineup.’ I don’t make a big deal out of it. Just trying something different. Fatt (Edwards Jr.) was unbelievable the last two days when he looked up on team one and saw he wasn’t on there. Didn’t pout, didn’t hang his head, went back to work, and he did what I expected him to do. When the lights came on he was ready to play.”
(On if there was anything special that allowed him to play as well as he did, was it his previous experience against Duke?)
Terrence Edwards Jr
“No, it’s just staying the course. You go through ups and downs in this game, and you have got to stay positive and be within a team when changes are made. So that [is] just where that came from. Just consistently put in the work. You’re going to have bad games. You’re going to have good games. You can’t get too high. You’ve got to try to stay in the middle. So, that’s where that came from. [There was] nothing in the previous experience, when I played [Duke] last year in the [NCAA] tournament.”
(On if fatigue played a role in the loss)
J’Vonne Hadley
“At the end of the day, we really can’t make excuses. That’s a big part that we really hang our hats on, just not making excuses. Guys go down, it’s a part of basketball, injuries, and it’s just something that you have to deal with and be able to adapt to. We’re still trying to figure it out, and again we can’t make excuses. But we do this thing where we have to win each war, it’s minutes and segments, and we were right there with them. We won some of them, we lost some of them, then towards the end of the game we were minus-11 and that kind of broke the game open right there.”
(On the moment when he hit a big three and hearing the reaction of the crowd)
Terrence Edwards, Jr
“It feels good to be able to do that with a crowd that’s just been waiting for a good Louisville men’s basketball team. We’re just trying to stack days on that and build off that, and we want to use the crowd as an eighth man, we say, and try to get the crowd into it to try and contribute to a win. It didn’t happen tonight but, we’re just going to build off of that moving forward.”
(On the implementation of more cutting on offense when 3-pointers aren’t falling)
J’Vonne Hadley
“I would kind of just say that’s just a little bit reading the defense. But when we get in there, we have to be more sound than we have been these last couple of games. Myself personally. I’m just getting in there and just realizing that [defenders] are going to rake at the ball, reach, pull your arm, just do all types of things and you have to be strong. I feel like myself personally, I haven’t been the best at that, taking care of the ball, and our team as a whole. That’s something that we really need to just lock in and work on, because we can’t beat a top-ranked team like [Duke] when we’re turning the ball over as much as we did tonight.”
(Was there anything Duke was doing differently in the second half that got the team off-rhythm, or was it more a lapse on Louisville’s part?)
Terrence Edwards, Jr.
“For sure us. Our coaches prepare us well for these moments. Like J’Vonne said, that war we lost was minus-11 and we felt like we won pretty much every war before that or even tied it. It’s just really staying sound and fighting the fatigue. That’s not an excuse that we’re playing seven people, we’ve just got to do the basics brilliantly and especially when we’re tired on the defensive end. We’re just one rebound away or one stop away from being a great team and just one shot away from being really good. As a team, we talk about this stuff after the game, so we’re staying positive. We know it’s about to click really soon and it has to be now going into conference for sure.”
(On running more set plays due to the amount of people in the rotation, has it changed the way you approach the game?)
J’Vonne Hadley
“Not really, like coach always says, the standard is the standard. If they miss and we get the rebound, we’re looking to get into transition for sure and yeah, we’re just following what they coaches say. If they call a play we’re going to execute it to the best of our abilities. At the same time, if we get a rebound we’re looking to run in transition, because we have a lot of people that it is a strength of theirs.”
(On the importance of Khani Rooths’ progression throughout the season)
Terrence Edwards, Jr.
“We always tell him how important he is, even before his minutes got extended. He’s practicing well every day. We know he’s a good player, and he wants it. That’s the difference between him and a lot of freshmen, he really wants to be out there and guard the best player or just guard people period. He has the right mindset going into every practice. Even if the team’s not really going hard in practice, he’s the one person that is giving his all. And he deserves everything he did tonight and more. I feel like moving forward, he’s going to be much, much better.”
(On confidence being part of Khani Rooths’ progression)
J’Vonne Hadley)
“I would say so. No matter what age you are, confidence is the X-factor. You go through highs and lows, like Terrence said earlier, when your confidence is super-high, every shot’s going in and everything is good, but the low is when you’re not making a lot of stuff. We talked to Khani and he already understands coming from IMG, being at a prestigious level, he understands that he just has to go out there and be himself just like he does every day in practice. We just have to be those veterans to him, but no discredit to him, he’s handled it like a senior.”
(Photo via Sam Upshaw Jr. – Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
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