LEXINGTON, Ky. — Pat Kelsey felt equal parts pride and pain after his dream season ended in nightmare fashion Thursday across the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Jamiya Neal poured in a career-high 29 points to go with 12 rebounds and six assists to lead No. 9 Creighton past No. 8 Louisville, 89-75, Thursday in first-round South Region contest in Lexington.
Steven Ashworth added 22 points and Ryan Kalkbrenner scored 14 for Creighton (25-10), which advances to play Auburn – the top overall seed of the Tournament – on Saturday in a second-round South Region contest.
Chucky Hepburn had 22 to lead Louisville (27-8), which finishes a dramatic turnaround season with consecutive losses in the ACC tournament championship to Duke and Thursday’s first-round loss to Creighton. Terrence Edwards Jr. added 21 for Louisville, which had a large contingent of fans make the trip to Rupp Arena, just 70 miles east of campus.
“They played very well today. They were the better team today,” said the Cincinnati native who left Charleston to take over a beleaguered but proud Louisville program that had gone 12-52 in two seasons under Kenny Payne. “(They) played in a very, very tough environment being right down the road from our school. Give them a lot of credit. Proud of our guys. It’s been a long journey since June 5th when these guys first came together for summer school. Zero scouting report players.”
Kelsey’s task last June was enormous. He was tasked with instilling credibility back into The Ville. He took over a roster that didn’t have a lot of firepower and added Hepburn from Wisconsin and Edwards from James Madison, and finished 18-2 in the ACC, just one game behind Duke for top spot in the conference.
“(We) built the entire team in a very, very short amount of time,” Kelsey said. “They meshed quickly. We asked them to love each other from day one and these guys went all in with everything they had with everything I asked them to do. For ten months and for the rest of my life and for the rest of my career, I’ll remember this group as one of the most special groups that I’ve ever coached. I know they are savvy, they are veteran. They are smart, hard-working, dedicated.”
The Cardinals also dealt with injuries to key players like starting forward Aboubacar “Kader” Traore (broken left arm in practice) and backup point guard Koren Johnson (shoulder). In Louisville’s Battle 4 Atlantis title game matchup with Oklahoma, starting forward Kasean Pryor, who was Louisville’s second-leading scorer and leading rebounder at that point, suffered a torn left ACL and was lost for the season.
Aly Khalifa and Kobe Rodgers took medical redshirts for their own injuries, this left Louisville with just eight healthy scholarship players. And the Cardinals had an early three-game losing streak that made it look like this was going to be another dreadful year. But the ACC coach of the year miraculously put it all together.
“Just been a special, special group. I told them in there, you know, it will hurt bad today. It will hurt for the next several days. It will hurt for a while. But when they event actually are able to have perspective and get above the trees on what they have done and what they have accomplished, they have done some special, special things.”
Creighton was 11-for-24 from beyond the arc while Louisville was just 8-for-29.
“Our execution was terrific. We beat an incredible team, and I couldn’t have been more impressed with them in our preparation,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “We felt like we had to win the three-point line battle, so we did what we do co to try to force them into twos, and if they were taking threes, they were going to be challenged.”
But while the loss was painful, it was also – unfortunately – ugly at the end.
As Louisville was trying to make a comeback down 12, 73-61, with 4:41 left, Kelsey picked up a technical foul. A water bottle was thrown onto the court in front of the Creighton bench from a section of angry Louisville fans just to the right of the Bluejays. The game was delayed for five minutes as the mess was cleaned up.
After the delay, Ashworth hit both technical free throws and Neal hit a jumper that hit the back of the rim and fell through as the shot clock was expiring to turn it into a four-point possession and a 77-61 lead.
“I got frustrated and said something I shouldn’t have said and he teed me up,” Kelsey said. “Far less than an ideal time to get technical, I realize that. So it is what it is.”
Last Saturday, the Cardinals entered the ACC title game against Duke with an 11-game win streak and a 27-6 mark. They end it with a loss to Duke in the ACC Championship and a loss to Creighton Thursday in a game where they could never get on track.
Louisville, which trailed by 20 late in the first half, could get no closer than 10 points in the final two minutes.
“I would just say in the first half, we got a little bit frustrated,” Louisville guard J’Vonne Hadley said. “They were physical with us. We just couldn’t get to our spots where we wanted to get to, and I think it kind of just frustrated us a little bit.”
Hepburn, Louisville’s leading scorer this season, single-handedly kept Louisville in the game. Hepburn finishing with 18 of his team’s 34 points in the first half, including a buzzer-beating three-pointer that cut Creighton’s lead to 49-34 at the half.
Kelsey – the product of Roger Bacon High, Elder High and Xavier University could not get his Cardinals to pull off the dramatic comeback in front of a rabid fan base the way his alma mater did on Wednesday against Texas at UD Arena.
“All I can think about right now is that loss and it hurts really, really bad,” Kelsey said. “I wanted it so bad. Our players wanted it so bad. Our fan base wanted it so bad. They answered the call. There was so much red there. There was so much passion. There was so much noise.
“All I can feel right now is just that, and it hurts really, really bad. There will come a time when we will look back and you kind of appreciate it a little bit more. But now is not the time. We’ve got a bunch of hurting guys in the locker room. We have some guys that will never put on a jersey again ever again. We have some guys that will go on and play professionally.”
“I can say all the games kind from the beginning,” Hadley added. “The adversity we faced early in the year with losses, and some of our key players go down in the year. And this team just rallied together and never had an excuse of anything. We went to practice and it was no excuse and it was the next-man-up mentality. I’ve never been part of nothing like that.
“And I’m walking away from this with a good attitude and the things that Coach PK brought to me in my life is going to help me be a better father, and moving forward, I know I’m fine going to this pro thing because of all the adversity that I’ve faced this year and my life is just going to make me better?”
Louisville was climbing uphill for basically the entire game. Jackson McAndrew hit on three threes in the first half to help Creighton build its lead after Louisville drew to within three.
“My guys did a great job, offensively, defensively, Jamiya was terrific, Jackson, big shots in the first half, and then Steven throughout the game running the show for us,” McDermott said. “It’s a really gratifying win because of who we beat and how good I thought they were.”
“Those guys are knock down shooters,” Neal said of Ashworth and McAndrew. “They space the floor for me. Obviously, I’m a guy that I like to play in space and that’s part of the reason why I picked to come to come to Creighton because I knew I would play with guys like Steven and Andrew, and the rest of the guys.”
In almost tragically appropriate fashion, Louisville lost backup guard Reyne Smith with 11:37 left in the second half on a loose ball scramble just before Traore went in for a Cardinals layup. Smith was on the floor for several minutes holding his troublesome left ankle before slowly getting to his feet and being helped to the locker room by trainers.
He did not return to the game. And the Cardinals and Kelsey could not work any further magic on this day across the state in Lexington.
