Louisville basketball blows lead vs Boston College as ACC losing streak reaches 9 games

Kenny Payne had a new look, but it wasn’t an effort to spark a change.

And the Louisville basketball coach is taking his team straight from Boston this week to Notre Dame — a two-game NBA-style road trip without a return home in between — but not to shake up the routine.

After his team lost 75-65 at Boston College on Wednesday, Payne shot down any suggestions that he was looking for motivational buttons to push.

That sharp suit jacket, black and checkered with red lines? Payne had only abandoned his pullover to represent Coaches vs. Cancer’s Suits and Sneakers Week.

“I’m not superstitious like that,” Payne said.

Nor is he trying to shake up the Cards with a trip from Boston to South Bend, Ind., he said. He’s past any of that.

“When the game started, I told the guys ‘Here's my analogy for you: Take out the strategies; doesn't mean anything. We're two dogs and there's one bone. Who's gonna eat?’” Payne said. “That’s the mentality you got to have. And I thought we did that for parts of the game.”

But only parts.

That’s how it goes for Louisville (2-18, 0-9 ACC).

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It looked different sometimes Wednesday. And not just because Payne and his staff sported jackets on the sideline.

On the court, too, the Cards looked sharp to start.

Mike James and El Ellis got Louisville off to a fast start, combining to score the Cards’ first 15 points. They helped spark an early stretch in which Louisville shook off an 0-for-4 shooting start to make 9 of its next 10 shots. U of L led by as many as 12 points in the first half, shooting 60% from the floor and making 5 of 9 3-pointers.

Payne’s courtside celebrity supporters — New York Knicks Julius Randle, Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett — had reason to smile. Payne had been an assistant to all three in New York, and to Randle and Quickley in college at Kentucky, and for much of the first half, it looked like they might see Louisville’s first win this season away from the KFC Yum! Center.

But there’s a but. There usually is. Often it’s the same one.

Louisville committed nine of its 19 turnovers Wednesday before halftime.

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“I felt like we had a good grasp of the game and then the 12 should have been 18,” Payne said. “But what happens is, if you don't take advantage of those moments, you got to know that the other team on their home court is going to make a run. So we walk in the locker room instead of being up 18, we walk in there up six. And a lot of it was off our mistakes.”

Even when Louisville did encouraging things — and it did plenty — those mistakes loomed. They always do.

Trailing 35-29 at halftime, Boston College scored the first five points of the second half to pull within one, and the Cards didn’t fold. They fought back to lead by as many as seven.

That’s not been Louisville’s strong suit.

For a time Wednesday, it seemed like that might change.

“I seen a lot more, I guess, resiliency whenever that adversity did hit,” forward Jae’Lyn Withers said. “We continued to fight.”

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But ultimately Boston College (10-11, 4-6) was the hungrier team.

“They have something that I wish we had a little more of, and that's toughness,” Payne said. “Their physicality, the way they play, for the most part, we handled it first half. Second half, they were the aggressors and they put us on our heels.”

At one point, the Eagles scored 10 straight points to turn a 45-38 deficit into a 48-45 lead.

When the Cards got back in front on five straight points by JJ Traynor, Boston College responded with eight in a row, including a Jaeden Zackery 3-pointer with 5:56 to play that put the Eagles in front to stay.

The Cards got 17 points from Ellis, 16 from Withers and 15 from James. They kept the game close until the closing minutes. They led for 24:40 of game time to BC’s 11 minutes.

“Thought this was a winnable game,” Payne said.

There are supposed to be some now.

The Cards’ next three opponents — Notre Dame, Georgia Tech and Florida State — entered Wednesday with a combined record of 33-50, 10-30 in the ACC. Entering Wednesday’s games, their average rating at college basketball analytics site KenPom.com was 161. Louisville was ranked 295th.

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But unless Louisville fixes its issues — notably the turnovers that Payne called “the elephant in the room” — the soft schedule won’t amount to much more than this week’s change of attire and itinerary.

“If you really break down this game of basketball, and any sport, it's probably more mental than it is physical,” Payne said. “And what separates good from great? It's mental. What separates bad from good? It's mental. A mental capacity to fight through adversity, a mental capacity to focus and do your job at hard times and be locked in and not forget to be mentally sharp and play with a determination.”

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brett Dawson at mdawson@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @BDawsonWrites.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball vs Boston College: ACC losing streak at 9 games