It’s a rivalry again. Louisville basketball knocks off Kentucky basketball, behind freshman sensation Mikel Brown Jr.
“Make a Hole!”
Even though we got to the front of the Yum! Center over an hour before tipoff of Louisville basketball vs. Kentucky, the line to get inside extended almost halfway to Main Street. I was growing increasingly concerned as we slowly trudged our way towards the metal detectors: there really did seem to be quite a bit of Blue in the crowd.
A woman near me was yelling for people to move so her elderly father, who was in a wheelchair, could get out of the cold as quickly as possible: “Make a hole! MAKE A HOLE!” she screamed. I looked around at the Wildcat gear peppering the Cardinal red…there were gonna be more a-holes in this building tonight than on any other this year, I thought…no need to make any more!
My Dad and I walked laps of the upper concourse in anticipation of the game beginning.
The atmosphere was undeniably electric.
It was all “Cards” and “Cats” cheers, talkin’ smack and talkin’ back, between the fan bases. We took our seats as the players took the court and the Cardinal Singers serenaded the crowd with “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The earliest meeting between the Bluegrass State’s two top 10 powerhouses was about to get underway.
Downtown Mikel Brown
The game began with Ryan Conwell missing a free throw: remember that. Conwell got the second of the pair, and the Cards took a 7-5 lead following Mikel Brown, Jr.’s first three.
The Wildcats went on a tear of 10 straight points in the paint, including two lobs, beginning at the 15:42 mark and ending with a Jaland Lowe four point play, giving them their largest lead of the game at 21-17. Conwell hit two free throws halfway through the first half, and the Cards took a 23-22 lead.
They would never give it back.
The Egyptian Magician
For those of you who fail to understand my obsession with Aly Khalifa, let me take a paragraph to diagram some Egyptian magic. At the 6:51 mark, Khalifa gets the ball at the top of the key, fakes one pass to Ryan Conwell after running his man off of Aly on a weak screen.
The middle is effectively cleared out because Khalifa is up top, so he threads the needle with a bounce pass to a cutting Conwell, who connects on a reverse layup before the defense can recover.
It’s just gorgeous basketball that comes from Khalifa’s exceptional combination of intelligence, size, court vision, and passing ability: no wonder Mark Pope said that Khalifa changed the way he saw basketball.
Back and Forth
Back to the play-by-play: after Lowe’s 4 pointer, the Cats wouldn’t get a field goal until there was 6:34 remaining. Brown, Jr. scored five straight points, expanding the Louisville basketball lead to 46-28 with four and a half to go in the half. Back-to-back threes by Denzel Aberdeen and Collin Chandler cut the lead to 47-40, which Louisville again expanded to 53-46 following another Brown, Jr. drive with two seconds remaining.
Louisville took this lead into the locker room, largely on the back of an explosive first half b Brown, Jr. in which he racked up 20 points in just his third college basketball game.
Also read: Why I hate Kentucky and always will
Waxing…
Louisville basketball began the second half with threes by Conwell and Isaac McKneely. Adrian Wooley would add one of his own five minutes in, making it a 69-54 Cardinal lead that Brown, Jr. made the game’s largest at 78-58.
…And waning
The Wildcats would slowly chip away at this deficit in the next ten minutes when Kam Williams and Chandler hit three triples between them, cutting the lead to 11 with nine minutes to go.
The Cards had gone ice cold from beyond the arc and UK got the lead to single digits when Khalifa again hit a cutter, this time J’Vonne Hadley, with an incredible back-door bouncer that ballooned the Wildcat deficit back to ten. Kentucky would get as close as 88-84, following another Chandler three, but Mikel Brown, Jr. again stepped up: he got another five straight points, including a three-point play, giving Louisville a cushion that expanded to 95-86 following a tough post-up of Lowe by Conwell with 93 seconds to go.
Sananda Fru grabbed an offensive rebound off a McKneely miss, giving the Cards a new shot clock with less than a minute to play and in the double bonus, which should have allowed them to ride the line for the rest of regulation.
Free throw-for-seven!
Remember how I asked you to commit Ryan Conwell’s opening missed free throw to memory? Here’s why: in the last fifty seconds, Louisville basketball seniors Ryan Conwell and J’Vonne Hadley took eight free throws, which should have put the game fully out of reach for the Cats.
Instead, the guys who, logically, you would want at the line in these situations, missed seven of their eight attempts. This cannot persist if Kelsey has deep-run hopes.
Eighth free throw makes an eight point win
Thank God that stubborn Cardinal defense, and some crucial rebounding from Fru, kept the Wildcats at bay. Kentucky never really threatened in the final minute, but the Cards definitely left the door open.
It would have been simply tragic had the 29-point performance of Brown, Jr., along with Conwell’s 24, been negated by the inability to close things out from the charity stripe.
When the clock read double zero, though, the score was 96-88: home team.
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No Big Deal
While it was the stellar play of Kelsey’s back court that stole the show, it was the contribution from Louisville’s bigs that I want to commemorate.
Khalifa really is something to behold as a distributor. He makes something out of nothing several times a game, and I was really happy to see him get points in the post as well.
Fru has become rock solid and dependable: whether it’s grabbing a lob, rolling on a pick, or pulling down rebounds when we desperately need a stop or second chance, I think that the Cardinals’ season will evolve in step with the play of their front court.
Louisville’s post players have a wide array of skills, and I think that Louisville’s ability to compete will evolve with its ability to incorporate front court diversity with back court dynamism.
It should be said…
In closing, it should be noted that Kentucky was playing without Jayden Quaintance. He has a torn ACL and will surely be a high-impact player when he gets back on the court.
That being said, UK effectively dominated preseason #1 Purdue in an exhibition without both Quaintance and Jaland Lowe, which says as much about Kentucky’s exhibition victory as it does Louisville’s on Tuesday night.
While the Cards did let a twenty point lead diminish to four, they overcame stretches of poor shooting from the field and, infuriatingly, from the line with less than a minute to play, to beat a top ten opponent in a rivalry game.
Louisville basketball managed to put up nearly as many points against Kentucky as they did against South Carolina State and Jackson State, and I see their defensive intensity grow by leaps and bounds every game.
We have liftoff!
When Kelsey was cleaning up in the transfer portal while many teams were still playing in the tournament at the end of last season, it was rumored that Cardinal Basketball might really be back from the dead. After Tuesday night’s game, those rumors became facts.
The road before him has many tests, but I believe that, one day, we’ll look back and say that, though it ignited during the team’s two month stretch of victories at the start of 2025, Tuesday night was when the ReviVille really took off.
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