77 - 54 Hoorah
The Louisville basketball team avoided its first four-game losing streak in almost 14 years by taking care of Georgia Tech 77-54 Thursday night at the KFC Yum Center.
After struggling mightily on the defensive end for the past two weeks, U of L held the Yellow Jackets to just 16 first half points. The Cardinals also forced 20 turnovers and limited the visitors to 36.4 percent shooting from the field.
On offense, Louisville was led by a balanced attack that saw nine players score four points or more. That group was led by Jordan Nwora, who came off the bench to score 16 points on 5 of 7 from behind the three-point line. Anas Mahmoud (12 points), Ray Spalding (11 points) and Malik Williams (11 points) also scored in double figures.
As a team, U of L connected on 12 of its 20 three-point attempts, shooting a better percentage from beyond the arc than at the free-throw line (11-for-19, 57.9 percent).
It wasn’t a perfect effort by any stretch of the imagination. Nobody for Georgia Tech outside of Josh Akogie (15 points, 10 rebounds) and Ben Lammers — who looks like his body might not make it through the season in one piece — appeared particularly interested in competing. This had a decent amount to do with their being very few anxious moments inside the Yum Center Thursday night.
Still, after back to back lackluster performances, Louisville was noticeably more committed on the defensive end tonight. If we weren’t able to say that right now, then there’d be little hope for the rest of the month. For now, hope remains.
Keep working, beat Pitt on Sunday, use the extra rest to get fresh and get better next week, and then we take our best shot at a brutal stretch to end the regular season.
For the moment, though, it just feels nice to win one again.
