Louisville basketball, with large KFC Yum! Center crowd, ends regular season with 25 wins

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Louisville basketball coach Pat Kelsey gambled on senior day, electing to honor the Cardinals playing their last game at the KFC Yum! Center after Saturday’s regular-season finale against Stanford — not before it.

“I’ll be really excited and looking forward to it when the buzzer sounds, if we’re on the winning side of the scoreboard,” Kelsey told reporters Friday. “I won’t be very fun to be around if it’s the other way.”

No sweat; No. 13 U of L (25-6, 18-2 ACC) had its best defensive half of conference play out of the gate and rode that momentum to a 68-48 victory over the Cardinal (19-12, 11-9) in front of the largest announced crowd for a game at the Yum! Center since 2020: 18,707.

Louisville took control of this one with a 13-0 run — featuring baskets from four of its seven senior day participants, Noah Waterman, Chucky Hepburn, Aboubacar Traore and Terrence Edwards Jr. — that turned a 5-2 deficit less than three minutes after tipoff into a 15-5 advantage at the 13:35 mark of the first half.

The Cards proceeded to hold Stanford to 13 points on 4-for-27 shooting — including a streak of 11 consecutive misses — to take a 33-18 lead into the locker room. The visitors pulled within single digits twice during the second half but never got closer than eight points.

Stanford’s 18-point first half was its worst of the season. For Kelsey’s team, this was the second time of the campaign it has held an opponent to under 20 before the intermission; the first being Morehead State’s 14-point first half in the season opener.

Hepburn and Edwards led U of L with 16 points apiece. J’Vonne Hadley was the only other player to break double digits with 11. Waterman came the closest to doing so with eight.

Reyne Smith, the Cards’ No. 3 scorer, sat out of this one with a right-ankle injury. He was wearing a boot on his right foot.

Up next for Louisville: the ACC Tournament at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Cards won’t play until…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/louisville-basketball-large-kfc-yum-210512810.html

Author : The Courier Journal

Publish date : 2025-03-08 21:05:00

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