Louisville NCAA Rewind: March 28th
With the 2020 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament cancelled, Louisville Report will go back in time to recap all of the University of Louisville men's basketball's NCAA Tournament games from each date in March and early April. Special thanks to Sports-Reference.com for boxscores and the Courier-Journal for newspaper archives.
Louisville's March 28th NCAA Tournament Record: 0-1
2014: Kentucky defeats Louisville 74-69
Despite heading into their in-season rematch with Kentucky as the clear favorites this time around, the fourth-seeded Louisville Cardinals fell victim to their old ways, and their chance at repeating as national champions were cut short by the eighth-seeded Wildcats at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
A common criticism of the 2013-13 iteration of Louisville basketball was their inability to finish games and have complete performances, an unfortunate trait that reared its ugly head once more. While Louisville exploded to an 18-5 lead to start the game, missing 9 free throw in the first half alone allowed Kentucky to trim the Cardinals halftime lead to just 3. Louisville wound up finishing the game just 13-23 at the charity stripe, and losing the rebound battle 37-29
With just five minutes left in the game and a trip to the Elite Eight on the line, Louisville possessed a 66-59 lead and were poised to exorcize their demons. Unfortunately, a 7-0 UK run tied everything up with 2:11 left and momentum clearly in the Wildcats' favor.
A free throw from Alex Poythress was countered by a Russ Smith jumper to momentarily retake the lead for Louisville, but a three pointer in the corner from Aaron Harrison with less than a minute to go gave UK the lead for good.
The loss handed head coach Rick Pitino his first loss in the Sweet 16, dropping to 11-1 all time. Russ Smith finished with a game high 23 points on 9-20 shooting.
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