69 - 64 
A great week ends on a sour note.
Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images
Battle 4 Atlantis championship games are stupid. I’ve been saying it since 2012.
Louisville fell to 0-3 in such contests with a 69-64 defeat at the hands of Oklahoma Friday night in The Bahamas, putting a sour final note on what had been a very sweet week for the Cardinals.
Adding to the pain was the fact that starting forward Kasean Pryor went down with what appeared to be a pretty serious knee injury early in the second half.
Even without Pryor, U of L scratched and clawed their way back into a game they trailed from nearly start to finish. They pulled even at multiple points over the game’s final five minutes, but unlike the day before against West Virginia, they could never hit the shot that put them over the hump and into the driver’s seat.
It wasn’t for a lack of chances.
Louisville misfired on 10 of their last 12 field goal attempts in the game, including an open three from the left corner by Noah Watterman that could have given them the lead with less than 15 seconds to play. U of L’s last gasp at extending the game was quickly extinguished when Chucky Hepburn’s inbounds pass with 7 seconds to go was swatted away and stolen by Oklahoma’s Sam Godwin.
While the Cardinals out-rebounded Oklahoma by 21 and fought tooth and nail to hang with a Sooner team that was hitting shots at a much higher clip than they were, the free-throw line can easily be pointed to as the place where the game was won and lost.
Louisville misfired on seven of its 16 freebies, including three front ends of one-and-ones. OU, meanwhile, was 19-of-25 from the stripe.
It sucks that it ended this way, but my goodness did it feel good to feel alive again this week. Here’s hoping Kasean is just dealing with a sprain (it did not look good) and that the team can bring the good energy from this week back with them to the states.
Ole Miss is waiting at the Yum Center on Tuesday night and Duke will follow five days later. There’s no time to lick any wounds.
