Louisville Loses Exhibition Game to Division II school Lenoir-Rhyne

The Kenny Payne era is officially here, but it was not the start Louisville fans wanted. Louisville lost its first exhibition game 57-47 to a Division II school, the Lenoir-Rhyne Bears, on Sunday Oct. 30.

Yikes.

The Bears are coached by former Louisville player, and teammate of Payne, Everick Sullivan. They went 10-18 in the 2021-22 season, going 9-15 in their conference, and lost in the quarter-finals of the SAC tournament.

Louisville had quite a similar season in the 2021-22 season as well. The Cardinals went 13-19 and 6-14 in the ACC. They beat Georgia Tech in their first round of the ACC Tournament and lost to Virginia in the second round.

However, for the 2022-23 season, fans were expecting a turnaround from the bad play of last year. It is safe to say that is not what showed in the KFC YUM! Center on Sunday. The Cardinals started the game well, scoring a few early threes and jumping to a 13-4 lead. After that, Payne made four substitutions, and things quickly spiraled downward for the Cards.

Lack of effort on defense and bad ball movement leading to turnovers led to a run from Lenoir-Rhyne. During the next eight minutes of the game, the Bears went on a 15-5 run to lead the game 19-18 with seven minutes to go. The teams would go back and forth until the Cards would end the half leading 28-26.

The second half was much of the same for Louisville. The Cards only scored eight points in the first six minutes of the second half. Six of those points were free throws. The game was tied 36-36 with 13:37 to go. Bears guard, Hamilton Campbell, would make a 3-point shot to go up 39-36 and the Bears would never look back. Lenoir-Rhyne went on a 18-11 run to end the game with a 57-47 victory. The Cardinals shot a dreadful 29.2% from the field and 31.6% from 3-point range.

Jae’Lyn Withers led the Cardinals in scoring and rebounding with a 20-point and 10-rebound double-double. Mike James made a couple of threes and got eight points, while transfer Brandon Huntley-Hatfield scored five points. Two players on Lenoir-Rhyne score in double-figures. LJ McCoy led the Bears with 16 points and Salle Wilson got 10. The full box score PDF can be found here.

Louisville had won 39 straight exhibition games, with their last loss coming in 2000 to Global Sports All-Stars. Last season, Louisville played two exhibition games against Kentucky State and West Georgia. They won both of those games by an average of 50.5 points, and that team was supposed to be worse than this team, according to some.

Payne is looking for more fight from his team and dealing with adversity better. “We have to know that every player that has a jersey on, whether it’s practice, whether it’s a workout, whether it’s a game, you have to bring your best. You have to fight for your life, not just for you but for everybody else in the room,” Payne said after the game.

He continued, “We’re not the most talented team in the world, we’re not. We just made that evident by losing to a Division II school, what a great lesson. I wish it didn’t happen but I sort of needed it to happen because, at the end of the day, I’m going to say this, I’m trying to establish a culture and that culture is going to have some adversity in it, how do you handle it?”

The Cardinals will be back in action in their second exhibition against Chaminade at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday at the KFC YUM! Center. Their regular season starts Nov. 9 against Bellarmine University.

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