Louisville basketball trip down memory lane ends: Gutter Cats beat The Ville with walk-off 3

Louisville men's basketball coach Kenny Payne said Friday he had members of his video staff put together a package of plays from The Ville’s debut victory in The Basketball Tournament on Tuesday night to show this year's Cardinals "what this program is built on."

One of those principles, established during Denny Crum’s Hall of Fame tenure on the sidelines at Freedom Hall, is "Defense wins."

Practicing what Crum preached had The Ville on the verge of a regional championship Saturday afternoon, but the group of mostly former U of L players couldn't find the bottom of the net when it mattered most and had its inaugural TBT run come to a painful end four wins shy of a $1 million grand prize.

The No. 1 seed in the Louisville Regional, Gutter Cats, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, 64-62, as former Virginia Tech forward Jarell Eddie's game-winning, banked-in 3 sent the smallest crowd at Freedom Hall this week (4,442) home unhappy.

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The postgame scene in The Ville's locker room, coach Mark Lieberman said, resembled that of a team whose season had come to an end in the NCAA tournament.

"Those guys were really devastated," Liberman said.

The Ville led 56-55 when the Elam Ending kicked in and a target score of 64 was set at the first dead ball with under four minutes to play in the fourth quarter. With a 62-56 advantage, the ex-Cards missed five consecutive chances at game-winning shots; and the Gutter Cats responded with an 8-0 run to secure a spot in TBT's quarterfinal round for the second time in as many years.

Three of The Ville's five missed shots down the stretch came from Russ Smith, who after back-to-back performances of 20 points or more, tallied just 12 points on 4-for-21 shooting Saturday afternoon.

"I could have made some better decisions, but it is what it is," Smith said after the game, "It's the good with the bad, the bad with the ugly."

"The ugly" overshadowed The Ville's suffocating defense, which forced 24 turnovers (15 steals) and turned them into 21 points. Playing its third game in five days — and with Smith signing bottles from his private-label bourbon line, Mr. & Mrs., for a 62nd day in a row — a group known for getting buckets shot just 36.5% from the field, went 3 for 18 from behind the arc and 13 for 25 at the free-throw line.

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"Even though we weren't scoring, we were still guarding really hard," Lieberman said. "You lose on a banked 3; what are you going to do? That's the basketball gods, you know? That's just the way the game goes."

Chane Behanan led all players with 18 points on 8-for-11 shooting to go along with a game-high five steals. Smith and Chinanu Onuaku, who posted a 10-point, 12-rebound double-double, were the only other players on The Ville to reach double figures.

Behanan, who was dismissed from the U of L program in 2013 due to a failed drug test and hadn't played competitively since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic cut short a stint in a Puerto Rican professional league, said multiple times heading into TBT he hoped to use its exposure to revive his career on the court.

Lieberman thinks that's possible after watching Behanan first lose nearly 30 pounds during the buildup to the tournament, then average 13.3 points and seven rebounds in 23.3 minutes per game this week.

"Even at the end of the game, he was guarding a wing and he was doing a tremendous job staying with him, switching on any of the actions they had," Lieberman said. "He can do a lot of things — he can play around the basket; he can play on the perimeter; he can shoot it and he can guard multiple positions.

"I'm hoping this transfers over to where he can make some money playing the game again, for sure."

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Lieberman is also hopeful the success of The Ville's TBT debut will serve as a springboard to making the tournament a staple of the city’s summer sports scene.

"It was palpable around town," he said. "We certainly didn't know it was going to be like this — beyond expectations for what the product was.

"Guys in the locker room were like, 'Wait till next year; we'll get this going.'"

When asked if he wants to run it back next year, Smith said, "It depends on the situation," noting how much can change in 12 months.

"It's a blessing to be able to play right now," he added. "I've been injured the past three years, this is my first summer playing basketball (competitively), so we'll see what happens next year."

Whether or not Freedom Hall is pegged to host a regional in 2024 will be decided at a later date; however, its ability to galvanize the Louisville fan base didn’t go unnoticed.

Payne on Friday said athletics director Josh Heird approached him during The Ville’s TBT opener Tuesday about adding a game at the storied arena to the team’s schedule in the years to come. After having flashbacks to his time running the court there as a player for Denny Crum from 1985-89, Payne all but gave his stamp of approval.

"Being there helped me realize just how important and special that place was to so many people," he said.

Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @brooksHolton.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: The Ville TBT at Freedom Hall: Louisville basketball alumni team falls