Pat Kelsey Calls Louisville's Performance vs. Arkansas 'Unacceptable'

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Louisville men's basketball program entered their ACC/SEC Challenge matchup at Arkansas with a lot of momentum on their side.

For starters, the Cardinals were one of the most efficient offenses in all of college basketball, coming in at No. 2 on the analytical site KenPom. Then over the last two-plus games, they began to make a ton progress in terms of their defensive efforts. Put it all together, and Louisville sported a perfect 7-0 record heading into Bud Walton Arena.

Unfortunately, they did not leave Fayetteville with an unblemished record. The Razorbacks jumped on the Cardinals early, and despite UofL making a push to come all the way back in the second half, they still were dealt an 89-80 loss on Wednesday night.

After the game, head coach Pat Kelsey didn't mince words with his team. Louisville's efforts on both ends of the floor against Arkansas left a lot to be desired, and he called their performance an "unacceptable" one by their lofty standards.

"Some of it I'll just save for between me and the team, but it was unacceptable," Kelsey said on what his message to the team after the game was. "We pride ourselves on being great in the process every day, and we are. I was proud of our guys, and their approach and how we practiced. But you do that every day so you develop great habits, so that when you're in these environments, you just, as we always say, you trust your training.

"On both ends of the ball, the things we value, and that we hold our guys accountable on the offensive and defensive end, it just wasn't good enough. The rebounding and the undisciplined fouling, I just told them there's a ton to clean up, and as they know, we will clean all of it up. But the big thing is that we got to have a great response to adversity."

On the offensive end of the floor for Louisville, it was clear from nearly the jump that they were struggling to deal with Arkansas' athleticism. Paint touches were hard to come by, mainly due to the pressure being applied by the Razorbacks. This in turn limited the Cardinals' ability to get the opposing defense to crash the post and subsequently kick it out to the perimeter. Additionally, shot selection left a lot to be desired as well.

By game's end, Louisville connected on only 41.4 percent of their attempts, and a normally hot-shooting three-point team went just 8-of-37 from beyond the arc. They also assisted on just 13 of their 29 made field goals, and turned it over nine times for 14 points the other way.

In fairness to Louisville, their efforts in the second half on that end of the floor got much better. After going on 12-of-36 before halftime, they went 17-of-34 for an even 50.0 percent after it. But for the game as a whole, it was far from their best offensive effort.

"They have a lot of length and athleticism," Kelsey said of Arkansas. "They pressured us, did a lot of switching, just to try to mess up our rhythm. They did a good job of that. First half especially, we were very discombobulated. We didn't play a disciplined style basketball. We weren't us, as I told the guys.

"I thought in the second half, thought we played better on the offensive end. When it got late, it was a six point game, I thought we got rushed. We're right there. We just need to get some stops and get and string together a couple really good offensive possessions, and I thought we got really hurried."

Not only was Louisville thrown off on the offensive end of the floor, over on defense, Arkansas was also the tone-setter.

The Razorbacks were by far and away the more physical team, not only out-rebounding the Cardinals 46-36, but snagging 18 offensive boards and scoring 27 second chance points off of them. While Arkansas shot marginally better for the game at 41.8 percent, Louisville also demonstrated a lack of discipline when it comes to being physical vs. fouling.

The Cards were called for whopping 25 fouls, whereas the Hogs were called for 15. This in turn resulted in 35 trips to the free throw line for Arkansas (making 27 of them), while Louisville had half of that at 18 trips (for 14 makes).

"It's a fight on the defensive end," Kelsey said, "Part of it is, again, without watching the tape, the discipline to make sure you're checking out, you're blocking out, you're being physical with that. But then it's a loose ball up in the air, and you just got to go get it. 43 percent of your misses getting back is a very, very, very high percentage, and unacceptable. We need to clean that up."

While Kelsey was encouraged by the effort to at least try and make a comeback after being down by as much as 20, Louisville doesn't have much time to gather themselves from the loss. They have another marquee matchup on tap next this Saturday at 2:15 p.m. EST, traveling to Indianapolis for a neutral-court showdown with Indiana.

"Just don't think we responded the way we need to, but we will," he said. "We'll dust ourselves off, get back to work, and we'll be better in two days (vs. Indiana)."

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