The USF Bulls lost 83-79 to the Louisville Cardinals in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Thursday in the KeyBank Center. Despite shaving a 23-point deficit to four, the Bulls could never tie or take the lead in the second half.
“We shot ourselves in the foot,” USF head coach Bryan Hodgson said in the postgame press conference. “In the first half, we really didn’t put ourselves in a position to win the basketball game.”
Louisville guard Isaac McKneely led the Cardinals with 23 points, while senior guard Joseph Pinion led the Bulls with 27 points. Izaiyah Nelson also had 22 points, and former Bulls guard Ryan Conwell had 18.
“We cut the slate clean and fired on all cylinders,” McKneely said after the game. “From the get-go, I thought our defense was really good. My teammates did a good job finding me.”
Three-point shooting was the difference in the contest, with USF only making five of its 33 attempts. All five of the Bulls’ makes came from Pinion, who went 5-14 from three. The Cardinals were 13-25 from deep, including six makes for McKneely.
“Sometimes, teams scout really well against our plays,” Pinion said. “They were able to force us to go into something that we didn’t necessarily want.”
USF’s only lead of the contest came four minutes into the first half, as Gavin Hightower made a layup to give the Bulls a 7-5 lead. In the first half, the Bulls were held to 28.6% shooting from the field and 5.9% from three. However, they turned Louisville over 10 times and had the deficit to only 10 at the half.
Coming out of the half, the Bulls scored three baskets in the paint, including back-to-back baskets from CJ Brown. The Cardinals responded after a timeout, sparking a 10-2 run in two minutes.
The deficit grew to 23 on a McKneely three with 13 minutes remaining in the half. Pinion responded with the Bulls’ first three of the second half to spark a comeback attempt, where he scored or assisted on 10-straight points.
“We put ourselves in a hole, but I thought we battled back really hard,” Pinion said. “On that run, the whole crowd was behind us. I definitely thought we were gonna win the ball game, but we came up short.”
South Florida continued to chip away at the lead, with a Pinion jumper cutting it to six with less than two minutes remaining. Neither team would score for 90 seconds, and the Bulls eventually fell by four.
“We don’t have quit in us,” Nelson said. “All 14 guys, we don’t have quit in us.”
Despite Louisville being without star guard Mikel Brown Jr. and turning the ball over 22 times, USF could not come out with a win.
Louisville moves onto the round of 32 to face the winner of the Michigan State-North Dakota State game on Saturday. Meanwhile, South Florida’s future of the program is in limbo, with Hodgson in talks for open positions across Division I.
“[USF] took a chance on me, and I’ll forever be grateful for that,” Hodgson said after the loss. “The University of South Florida is just scratching the surface.”