Louisville's Chris Mack: Last Year's Duke Loss Worst of My Career

Duke erased a 15-point Louisville lead in the second half, bringing back ghosts of last year's comeback

Duke made stopping Louisville’s Jordan Nwora a key in Saturday’s game, holding the team’s leading scorer to six points on 3-of-12 shooting. Still, despite the success of that strategy, Duke lost to the Cardinals, 79-73.

“Here’s the thing, you play Duke, they deny everywhere,” Louisville coach Chris Mack said. “They’ve got a guard on him. They’ve got a big guy on him. They’re fronting him. They’re face guarding him. That’s why we got so many layups. That’s why we got David Johnson (19 points) to the rim. We’re using him as a rub screener, because they’re not going to help off Jordan. So (Nwora) got a couple leak out baskets. He missed a couple perimeter shots. Let me tell you something, if you think Jordan isn’t a great shooter, he’s shooting 40 something percent from three with everybody’s best shot. I think he should be most proud of being on the winning team.”

Duke erased a 15-point Louisville lead and tied the score late, bringing back memories of the Blue Devil’s 23-point comeback against the Cardinals last year. This time, however, Louisville held on.

“[I was] really pleased,” Mack said. “That sucked a year ago. It was the hardest defeat I’ve ever had. And, you go one of two things with our team’s mentality. They either think about those ghosts and they get revisited, and they tie it back, or it’s like, they got a little moxie to them, a resiliency, and that can’t happen again. They’ve still got to go out there and do the job. I’m really proud of our kids. Really proud of our guys. To be able to face what we did a year ago. That was a hard loss man. That was a really, really hard loss. So it feels a lot better this year.”