No. 8 Men’s Basketball stunned on road, loses to Wake Forest 88-81

The Louisville Cardinal By Jeff Milby–The No. 8 ranked Men’s Basketball team (23-7, 11-6) dropped a game in which they lead by 14 points in the first half to Wake Forest (17-12, 8-9), 88-81.Louisville jumped out to a hot start to begin the game, with strong efforts from sophomores Jaylen Johnson, Ray Spalding and Donovan Mitchell. The Cards led by as many as 14 points in the first half after a hot shooting start, but Wake Forest wouldn’t go out so easily on Senior Night. The Demon Deacons closed on a 10-2 to cut the lead to 43-42 at the halftime break.The Deacons’ run followed some Cards’ foul trouble. Johnson, Mitchell, Spalding and junior Anas Mahmoud all finished the half on the bench with two fouls apiece, and a front-court tandem of senior Mangok Mathiang and junior Matz Stockman saw the Cards lose the rebound battle in the first half, 18-16.The second half began just as the first ended. Wake hit two 3-pointers out of the break to take their first lead of the game less than two minutes into the half. With 15:19 to go in the game, Rick Pitino was assessed a technical foul following a third foul call on Spalding. Wake Forest hit three of the ensuing four free throws, and followed it with a 3-pointer to grow the lead to 11 points.Louisville would fight back to cut the lead to single digits in a back and forth second half, but Wake Forest answered every Louisville run with timely 3-pointers. With 4:32 to go, Ray Spalding’s tip-in cut the Wake Forest lead to three, and a Quentin Snider layup again cut the lead to three at 75-72 with 3:59 to go. Just as the comeback was nearly complete, Spalding threw the ball away with a chance to cut the lead to one, and Wake answered with back-to-back 3-pointers from  ...


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