What Louisville HC Kenny Payne Said After 94-92 Loss at Syracuse

Read what the head coach of the Cardinals said after their loss to the Orange.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - The Louisville men's basketball program's issues on the defensive end of the floor were on full display in their road matchup at Syracuse, suffering a 94-92 loss at the JMA Wireless Dome.

Here's what head coach Kenny Payne had to say following the loss:

Head Coach Kenny Payne

(Opening Statement)

First of all, hats off to Syracuse. They played hard. Did a lot of good things, they attacked us, got the ball in the paint. One guy made up for the three point shooting (Chris Bell), he had eight. But overall, I thought we played hard enough, and well enough, to win. Made some mental errors at critical junctures, but I'm proud of the guys for their fight. A lot of guys played very well. Tre White, Brandon (Huntley-Hatfield) for stretches played well, Skyy (Clark) played pretty well. I would love to have walked out of here with a win, knowing that that team was 10-1 at home, but we fell a little short.

(On what it will take to get the defense cleaned up)

Well, we keep working on it. We keep drilling on it. We keep telling them the importance of defending. We can't stop doing it. We have to emphasize it. We have to discipline guys when we're practicing and they don't do what they're supposed to do, or don't fight through a possession, or open up and give a guy a driving lane toward the basket, which we work on every day. But the when you break it all down, it comes down to: we have to be great as a group defensively. We know we're gonna break down somewhere. Well, somebody has to cover for us. For example, the last three (Chris) Bell got, we're playing ball screens two-on-two. There's no reason that we should leave the guy that got seven threes. But we have to make sure that we do a better job of communicating, and fighting through the things that we have to do to win games.

(On the team's poise, especially down the stretch)

Well, I thought we did some good things, but I also thought that we made some mistakes. I thought that, on the three that Skyy made, we come down and we celebrate instead of sprinting back and getting a stop. We have to make sure that everything that we're doing down the stretch in games, and that's just the reality of it. We play good enough to win, that was progress made from from last game to this game as far as down the stretch, not looking and playing to lose. This was more of a situation where we were playing to win, and we made big plays, we got big offensive rebounds. That's how we got to play, but we have to be smarter. We got to make sure we're not fouling shooters. We got to make sure if we're scoring four, five, six times around the basket, that we just don't take the ball stand on the perimeter for a three pointer. Our three pointers come from penetration and kick out, not the other way around. 

(On the explanation from the official regarding the end-of-game goaltending call)

They said it was definitely a goaltend. They looked at it two or three times. I have to see it on film. All the guys, all the staff guys, looked at it and I said it was not. I don't expect to get breaks. I expect us to make our breaks. ... There was enough plays within that game that we still should have came out of here with a victory

(On Louisville's porous fastbreak defense)

First thing is that we can't have turnover. Some of those baskets are points off turnovers. We turn the ball over, they go down and lay it up. Live ball turnovers kill us. We're not a team that can afford to do that. Second is, we attack the lane so much that we have to have floor balance. A part of us having success is we've been very good rebounding the ball. I don't want to give that up, but I also want us to have floor balance to get back in transition, and talk to each other so that we're not scoring and then giving up layups or something like that.

(Photo of Kenny Payne: Jamie Rhodes - USA TODAY Sports)

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