Louisville Basketball: 5 biggest league wins for Cardinals since joining ACC
By Caleb Hall
No. 11 Louisville 79, No. 3 Duke 73, January 18th 2020
Louisville was expected to be near the top of the ACC in their 2019-2020 campaign and they stayed near the top of the league throughout the entire season. Wins like this were the reason why.
Louisville started the game with a Rhythm and hardly lost the lead throughout the entire game, while even at one point being up 15 points against the Blue Devils. Duke shut down most of the Louisville starters and held Jordan Knowra to just 6 points on 3-12 shooting. However, David Johnson and Malik Williams off the bench provided the Cardinals with the defensive and offensive firepower that they needed to win this game.
Steven Enoch and Dwayne Sutton also got into double figures in scoring by the end of the game. Johnson provided 17 points off the bench along with 4 assists while Williams provided 11 points along with 7 rebounds. Johnson scored 17 of his career high 19 in the first half to get a healthy 10 point lead on the Blue Devils going into halftime.
Duke would eventually rally late in the 2nd half to tie it at 63. However, the Cardinals kept answering and hitting big shot after big shot. Not to mention that the defense the Cardinals played was fairly impressive against players like Vernon Carey, Tre Jones, and Jared Goldwire. Duke was only able to shoot 37% from the field and a measly 24% from the three point line.
It was one of those games that whenever it was starting to get uncomfortable for the Cardinals, they fought back and went on a run to reassure that they were going to win. It was almost payback for the years previous game between these two teams where Duke came back from down 23 in the KFC Yum Center.
Louisville bested Duke, and it will always one of my favorite road victories in Louisville basketball because of how impressive it is beating a top 3 ranked blue blood in their own arena.