Louisville basketball falls to Wake Forest on same day 1983 Final Four team honored

Kenny Payne talks a lot about the past.

And for much of his first season as the Louisville men’s basketball coach, Payne has only been hoping that all his talk about the standard the current Cardinals’ predecessors set would sink in, that eventually his first team might start to display some of the same traits as the greats.

Louisville remains a long way from that.

But even in an 80-72 loss Saturday to Wake Forest at the KFC Yum! Center, the Cards showed some old-school Louisville spark.

Payne’s Cardinals cut a 22-point second-half lead to as few as three. They overcame body blows from Wake Forest that no doubt would have been knock-out punches earlier in the season.

They took another big step in the right direction.

But not the kind of giant leap it needed.

For all its effort, Louisville (2-14, 0-5 ACC) dropped its fifth straight game. It still has yet to beat a power-conference team this season.

The rest is progress, but not the kind Payne wants.

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“Moral victories,” he said after the game. “I don't want 'em. I want us to play like that the whole game. And I just told the guys that: 'Don't find new ways to lose for me. Fight. I don't care that they have more talent than us. Fight, every second that you're on that floor.’”

That’s the standard Payne wants to set, the kind he’s referencing when he talks about the precedent left by Louisville teams in the past.

U of L honored one of them Saturday, recognizing the 1983 Final Four team at halftime for its 40th anniversary. Payne invited those players to Friday’s practice ahead of the Wake Forest game. And he held up that team as an example for the current Cardinals.

The way it passed; the way its players looked out for each other. While Payne’s team was in the locker room at halftime, Lancaster Gordon addressed the crowd on behalf of the ‘83 team and talked about commitment and dedication and accountability.

Payne’s stressing the same messages to his team.

“A lot of these schools have tradition that these young guys just don't understand,” said Scooter McCray, a captain on the 1983 team honored at halftime. “So that's what he's trying to establish right now and get to where they become aware of where they are, who they're representing and what it means to this city to support Louisville basketball.”

For a stretch Saturday, it looked like the Cards were soaking up the message Payne’s preaching.

Still, it took some time to get there.

Wake Forest (11-5, 3-2) took its first double-digit lead with 12:04 to play in the first half and held one until the 5:02 mark of the second. With 14:50 to play in the game, it led 53-31.

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But Cards guard Mike James scored 15 points in the second half — he had 24 in the game, topping the career-high 19 he had earlier in the week against Syracuse — and the Cards upped their effort.

James’ scoring and JJ Traynor’s effort helped key a 36-17 run that cut Wake’s 22-point lead to three on a James 3-pointer with 2:40 to play. It put the Louisville in position to win, the same way it had been Tuesday against Syracuse before ultimately falling 70-69.

Once again, all that Cardinal climbing couldn’t get Louisville over the hump.

Wake got 21 points from Damari Monsanto to lead four players in double figures, and the Demon Deacons scored 10 of the game's final 15 points to seal a win.

Still, there was growth, and Payne lauded his team for it. In the next breath he lamented its inability to close the deal. He stressed he can’t keep getting no-shows from key players like Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, who started and had two points on 1-for-2 shooting.

Payne wants effort. He wants fight.

“But I need them to understand what winning is,” he said.

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It’s commonplace around here. Or it was in the past. And that’s what Payne’s trying to get his players to understand. But it’s an uphill climb with a team that hasn’t experienced that. Saturday was another reminder.

“I went through it my first year,” Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said. “We won six games. It was hard, but you got to keep pushing every day, and they're competing.”

Just not up to the standard.

“It's a big basketball tradition, and this season we quite haven't lived up to the expectations,” James said. “But (Payne has) been telling us how important it is to just go out there and fight hard, because it's been warriors that played in this uniform. And we just got to go out there and show that we're warriors, too, despite our record.”

There were times when they showed it.

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El Ellis left the game in the second half with an apparent lower-leg injury and returned. He scored 12 of his 20 points and had seven of his eight assists in the second half. Traynor had all seven of his points and six of his seven rebounds, 12 after halftime.

Louisville outscored Wake 46-37 in the second half.

But on a day when the Cards honored an all-time great team, Payne didn’t want to give his too much credit for coming close. He wanted them to aspire to finish the deal the way the greats have done around here, to lean on the past in the hope that Louisville can be back in the future.

“I want our guys to take that spirit, the spirit of fighting, the pride for what's on their chest,” Payne said. “Louisville is a proud tradition, and I don't want to say that we’ve lost that, but something's off, and we got to get it back. We got to get it back.”

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: Wake Forest beats Louisville basketball. 1983 Final Four team honored