Louisville basketball shows improvement vs FSU, but not enough to string together ACC wins
The progress hasn’t always been easy to see.
This Louisville basketball team has made such small, sometimes almost-imperceptible steps forward, and so often they’re followed by steps back so pronounced they’re practically pratfalls.
It wasn’t so hard to spot Saturday.
Even in losing 81-78 to Florida State at the KFC Yum! Center, the Cardinals showed undeniable improvement, the kind anyone paying attention can see.
“We've gotten better from day one to today,” Cardinals coach Kenny Payne said. “And I know it's hard to believe: I would say we've gotten 70% better. Now you can look at me and say 'Well, how bad were you?' And I'll tell you we were really, really bad.”
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Louisville (3-20, 1-11 ACC) still isn’t good enough.
Not good enough even to beat pedestrian Florida State (8-16, 6-7), coming off a blowout loss to N.C. State; nor to overcome the 19 points the Seminoles scored off their turnovers; nor to come all the way back from a 17-point second-half deficit.
Not good enough, but tantalizingly close to it.
And better, undeniably.
“We played a much-improved Louisville basketball team,” FSU coach Leonard Hamilton said. “I loved the look in their eyes, the determination, the energy that they gave during critical parts of the game. I never felt that they backed off with the effort.”
That’s not the sort of thing anyone was saying about the Cardinals in November.
It’s not something Hamilton reasonably could have said after his Seminoles smacked the Cards 75-53 on Dec. 10 in Tallahassee, Fla.
The team he saw Saturday isn’t good. But it’s competitive.
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At a program as steeped in winning as Louisville, that isn’t enough. But cold comfort is better than none, which is what the Cardinals offered early, when they lost their first three games by a single point and their next three by 19 or more.
There was a time when even a team as up-and-down as Florida State could have done what it did Saturday — build a big lead and make tough shots to answer Louisville runs — and counted on the Cards to fold.
That much, at least, isn’t a given anymore, as evidenced by Louisville’s 20-5 second-half run — the rowdiest rally of this grievous season — that turned a 69-54 Florida State lead at the 10:08 mark into a tie game eight minutes later.
At one point in that stretch, the Seminoles went scoreless for more than four minutes.
“I saw the desperation,” Payne said. “I saw them connected to an offensive player. I saw them talking. I saw them in stances. I saw them put pressure on the ball. I saw El Ellis — who most of the time tries to coast through a game (defensively) — I saw him in a stance. I saw him alert. I saw him fight.”
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Ultimately, it wasn’t enough. Matthew Cleveland’s layup with 1:04 to play put Florida State in front for good, and despite one of its best efforts, Louisville never led.
Ellis’ 22 points weren’t enough, nor Kamari Lands’ 15 or Jae’Lyn Withers’ 14. The second-half push, admirable though it was, came too late.
That’s been the story of the season, often even in Louisville’s best games.
But on Saturday, at least, you could see what Payne said he saw.
The Cards’ connected effort resonated with a crowd announced at 12,966. It roared. It booed. It engaged.
Maybe because it saw a step forward.
Just not as big as the one it wanted.
Hamilton is convinced that one is coming. The Florida State coach says there isn’t “any doubt” Payne is the man to get Louisville right.
“Kenny inherited what he inherited,” Hamilton said. “So now he has to come in and get it done. If we're patient and give him the time, I'm gonna be saying 'I told you so.' Next time I come here I'm gonna turn my back and let y'all pat me on my back.”
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The Cards don’t want to wait.
Though Ellis called the loss “frustrating,” he said Louisville’s vibe is positivity. It’s looking forward. And not to the far-flung future, but to what lies ahead this season.
“Like, no matter what the score is, no matter how we start the game, it's about how you finish,” Ellis said. “I feel like we finished right away. I just feel like as long as we keep doing that, we're gonna be a tough team to beat when it comes to the ACC Tournament.”
That might be putting the cart in front of a horse still bringing up the rear in the ACC race.
But even if Louisville isn’t yet near where it wants to be, it’s closer than it was.
For now, that’s a step.
“For us to be competitive, from where we came from, says a lot about what these young men have done,” Payne said. “I know nobody really wants to hear that. It's win or life is over. But we've gotten better.”
Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brett Dawson at mdawson@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @BDawsonWrites.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville vs Florida State: Cards fall in ACC college basketball game
