Louisville’s season ends with 51-50 loss to Virginia

Louisville’s disastrous 2021-22 men’s basketball season came to an end Thursday night with a hard-fought 51-50 loss to Virginia in the second round of the ACC tournament.

The Cardinals led the Cavaliers by four at halftime, never trailed by more than four themselves, but — in a story all too familiar to U of L fans — just could not make the necessary plays in crunch time to pull off the upset victory and keep their season alive.

The Virginia loss sets Louisville’s final record at 13-19. The 19 losses are the most by a Cardinal team since a 12-19 campaign in 2000-01 that marked the end of Denny Crum’s Hall of Fame coaching career.

In his final game as a Cardinal, Malik Williams led U of L with 11 points to go with 13 rebounds. The double-double was the 13th of his college career.

Jayden Gardner led Virginia with 17 points, while Kihei Clark added 15. The Sixth-seeded Cavaliers now move on to face No. 3 seed in the final quarterfinal matchup of Thursday’s slate.

Virginia won despite not making a single three-pointer in the game. It marks the first time in over a decade that Louisville has lost a game in which its opponent made one or zero shots from beyond the arc.

There’s no way to call the last four months anything other than what they were, but the guys didn’t go out like chumps, they went down swinging, and that’s something.

Now, we all turn the page to whatever’s next.