Even without Mikel Brown Jr., Louisville basketball took care of business in its first of two west coast ACC games.
Pat Kelsey took the Louisville basketball program into Tuesday night’s matchup against the California Bears following a week and a half of inaction. The Cards have been dormant since their take down of the Montana Griz on December 20th followed a four game stretch in which they accrued their only two losses of the season.
Ugly games against Tennessee and Arkansas exposed vulnerabilities in the otherwise volatile Louisville offensive onslaught, brought on by a combination of poor shooting and interior inadequacy. In spite of losing every game in the last decade following a week or more of downtime (0-4), Kelsey hoped that his team would take more of rest than rust into their final game of 2025.
A victory against the Bears would provide a much needed Quad One win for UofL, who hoped to prove the merit of their national ranking by taking their potent point-producing play to the west coast, where they open conference play against two teams from the Golden State. In Berkeley, the Cards hit the ground running…without Mikel Brown, Jr., by the way.
Cards are a Bear
Sananda Fru gave Kelsey four quick points, which quickly became a 10-0 Cardinal lead after back to back threes from Isaac McKneely and Ryan Conwell. Following a Cal timeout, Dai Dai Ames gave the Bears their first score, at which point the Egyptian Magician entered the game. Aly Khalifa hit a driving Adrian Wooley, then McKneely, like a quarterback leading his receivers, on sequential possessions, making the Louisville lead 16-7 after a Justin Pippen three for the home team.
Foul play
It was then that California was granted their saving grace of the first twenty minutes: at the 12:26 mark, they entered the bonus. The Bears are, by the way, the best free throw shooting team in the ACC, and one of top ten in the nation.
Two of the whistles against the Cardinals were dead ball hand checks, on the way to sixteen total first half fouls. The Cards, however, used tight defense and strategic shooting to offset the resulting disparity from the charity stripe.
Leading
Kobe Rodgers and McKneely each hit threes, and Conwell laid one in halfway through the half, making the score 24-11. Louisville then forced California into three straight shot clock violations. Conwell hit two straight threes, and Wooley got a two in transition, making the score 36-18.
The Bears had entered the double bonus with 5:15 to play in the half, when Wooley and Hadley hit another pair of back-to-back threes. One more Khalifa assist to Fru was followed by an Adrian Wooley lay up just before the half ended, making the score 48-34. Louisville’s first half attack was balanced, their defense was aggressive, and they dominated the glass: in spite of California shooting an outrageous amount of free throws, and Mikel Brown, Jr. watching from the bench, the Cards enjoyed a comfortable lead.
The teams traded buckets for the first five minutes of the second half. Another Wooley field goal was followed by an old fashioned three point play from Khani Rooths, making the lead twenty points again. Khalifa then found Rooths for a dunk, and McKneely got another triple with nine minutes remaining and the score 71-47. The Cards appeared to be in absolute control, following a pair of Hadley free throws, when the game made a frightening, albeit brief, shift in momentum.
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Then bleeding
John Camden hit a three for Cal, followed by another quick bucket in transition for the Bears. The score was 73-57, when Vangelis Zougris committed an extremely unnecessary, and unintelligent, dead ball technical foul. California hit the awarded free throws, then connected on another three after the subsequent technical possession: Louisville had given up seven points on one trip down the court, and a lead that had been 25 points shrank to 11 in one hundred seconds of game play.
Looking back, now, it’s funny: I distinctly remember thinking, at several points in the first fifteen minutes of the second half, that Louisville would really have to screw up to lose this game. The Cards had played thirty two minutes of their best ball of the season, then one and a half of the worst I’ve ever seen: given the absence of Mikel, a loss that had seemed impossible for most of the game had suddenly become a very real possibility.
The Cards, however, recovered marvelously.
Then beating
Forward J’Vonne Hadley stopped the bleeding when he backed down a Bear for a paint field goal. Wooley added five straight points, making the lead a more comfortable 80-62 under five minutes, then Ryan Conwell took Louisville basketball the rest of the way: he had back-to-back sequences of paired free throws and three pointers, adding ten points in two minutes to his game total of 26.
When the game ended, Louisville had survived a fury of first half foul trouble and a harrowing hundred seconds to soundly stifle the formerly 12-1 Bears, 90-70.
Wooley had 21, McKneely and Hadley 11 each, and Fru recorded a double double (his first career double double, mind you). Following shaky showings on the road in early December, the Cards made a much-needed statement on Tuesday night.
California was off to their best start in 65 years, and UofL dominated every aspect of the game. They overcame the absence of their starting point guard, foul trouble that plagued most of the lineup, and a considerable disadvantage from the line by consistently forcing their opponent to the end of the shot clock and hitting crucial shots in a balanced offensive attack. If the losses to the Volunteers and Razorbacks posed questions, their complete victory against Cal gave a definitive answer.
New Year’s resolution
Louisville basketball continues their tour of the west coast on Friday against Stanford, before returning home to face the Duke Blue Devils.
The problems that plagued them earlier this month were nowhere to be found at the conclusion of 2025. Whereas they mindlessly chucked up three after three, regardless of shooting terribly, in their SEC road losses, their inside and outside games complimented each other beautifully last night.
The team that couldn’t grab a rebound before Christmas dominated the glass against the Bears. The absence of Mikel Brown, Jr. left the team looking lost in Knoxville, but they were badass in Berkeley. Knock on wood…Kelsey’s Cards just showed us they’re still worthy of celebration, heading into the New Year.
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