Louisville basketball rally falls short vs Oklahoma after impressive Battle 4 Atlantis run

Posted by Admin November 30, 2024 Basketball

Speaking with ESPN before his Louisville basketball team tipped off against Oklahoma in the Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis championship game, head coach Pat Kelsey reached into his bag of Skip Prosser sayings and pulled out one gem of a one-liner.

“You can’t sharpen your teeth eating oatmeal,” he said.

The Cardinals (5-2) will return home from the Bahamas with some valuable momentum and experience entering another daunting stretch of Kelsey’s inaugural season. But they will not bring back a championship trophy — and had another key player go down with an injury.

For the third time in as many trips to Atlantis Paradise Islands resort, U of L lost in the eight-team tournament’s title game — 69-64 to the Sooners (6-0).

Louisville trailed from the seven-minute mark of the first half until a 3-pointer from senior guard Reyne Smith knotted the score at 58 with only 5:06 remaining in regulation. But it allowed OU to close on an 11-6 run while missing 11 of its final 17 shots.

The Cards had a chance to tie the game at 67 with 8.1 seconds on the clock, but senior point guard Chucky Hepburn‘s inbounds pass was tipped by Sam Godwin and recovered by the Sooners, who iced the game at the free-throw line.

Hepburn, after scoring a career-high 32 points in Thursday’s overtime win over West Virginia, and fifth-year guard J’Vonne Hadley tied for the team lead with 12 points apiece. The latter pulled down a game-high 13 rebounds.

Terrence Edwards Jr. (11) and Noah Waterman (10) rounded out U of L’s double-digit scorers. It finished with its best rebounding margin of the season, +21 (44-23) and scored 25 second-chance points but had 14 turnovers — eight of which came during the first half — lead to 15 points for Oklahoma.

The Sooners’ Jalon Moore had a game-high 24 points on 7-for-17 shooting.

Louisville next plays at 9 p.m. Dec. 3, against No. 24 Ole Miss in the SEC/ACC Challenge at the KFC Yum! Center. Then, conference play begins at 6 p.m. Dec. 8 against No. 10 Duke at home.

It seems unlikely that Kasean Pryor will be available for those games after suffering an apparent left-leg injury less than a minute into the second half.

On the defensive end of the court, the fifth-year forward was clipped by Hepburn, who fell to the ground while trying to guard a driving Jeremiah Fears. Pryor pounded the court in pain while he was down and, with the assistance of a couple of staff members, limped back to the team’s locker room.

Entering the final seven minutes of regulation, U of L play-by-play announcer Jody Demling said on the radio broadcast that Pryor emerged from the locker room in a wheelchair being pushed by his dad and was sitting at the end of the team’s bench.

This story will be updated.

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.