LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Pat Kelsey’s Louisville basketball team is starting to figure itself out. And that’s an intriguing notion against an ACC that spent much of the non-conference season flailing. In an arena where Louisville men's basketball has never won, Kelsey’s Cardinals blew Virginia away 70-50 on Saturday afternoon. It was Louisville’s first win in John Paul Jones Arena in 10 tries, and the Cardinals’ first win in Charlottesville since 1990. It also ended a nine-game Virginia winning streak in the series and gave Louisville its first back-to-back conference road wins since 2021. The Cardinals were just the second team to reach the 70-point mark at Virginia in the past 63 games, and trailed for only 22 seconds of the game. They gave up only 16 points over the game's final 16 minutes. Kelsey said he didn't know about Louisville's losing streak until radio play-by-play man Paul Rogers told him about it a day prior. "Ignorance is bliss," Kelsey joked. He then said when Rogers told him, "I was like an 8-year-old, going la-la-la and putting my fingers in my ears." Whatever the case, the losing streak to Virginia, and in Virginia, is no more. In this game, after the teams battled for a brief time, Louisville became the more physical team. "I'm proud of our team," Kelsey said. ". . . I give our guys a lot of credit for executing. I thought our execution was excellent today -- out of timeouts, we work on that all the time. Opportunities don't present themselves every game, but every day you just put deposits into that area, so that when we need them, we can get them out of the mothballs, so to speak. But our guys did a really good job." Louisville had four players score in double-digits, and Chucky Hepburn and Terrence Edwards Jr., the Cards' two leading scorers on the season, weren't among them. "We've been through a ton of stuff," Kelsey said. "And our guys have fought through it. Whether it was a tough non-conference schedule -- and we say all the time you can't sharpen your teeth eating oatmeal. So we definitely sharpened our teeth. Dealt with some pretty significant injuries. Kader (Traore) being one of them. And they didn't hang their heads or pout, just kept working. But playing those really, really good teams early on really sets the stage for the tough games and tough environments you're going to have in the conference." Kelsey said he thought the turning point came during a first half timeout with the teams going back and forth. "I just said, fellas, I'm being honest with you right now, they're the more physical team," Kelsey said. "They were screening harder. They were getting 50-50 balls, and in the rebounding department. They just were out-hustling us. . . . But we've got a veteran team. A lot of times when we address things, these guys go out, they respond the right way. And I thought from that point forward, we were the aggressor." In the second half, leading 52-45 with 7:18 left, Louisville allowed only one field goal over the next 4:48. They outscored Virginia 12-2 in that span to open a 17-point lead, and Virginia didn’t have enough offensive firepower to overcome it.
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