Kenny Payne: 'I'm blaming myself' as Louisville basketball falls to 0-8 with loss to Miami

You keep thinking it can’t get worse.

At some point, you figure, this Louisville men’s basketball team will have fallen as far as it can.

And then Sunday happens.

That’s when Miami crushed the Cardinals 80-53 in the Atlantic Coast Conference opener at the KFC Yum! Center, dropping Louisville to 0-8 this season. The Cards trailed by as many as 32 points. They lost for the fourth straight game by 19 or more points, an average margin of 27.8 points in that span.

Louisville had its moments against the Hurricanes (8-1, 1-0 ACC). It showed some early hustle. It used a full-court press in the second half to create a little havoc. It trimmed a massive deficit in garbage time.

But the bottom line was as bad as it’s been.

The Cardinals were slow to close out on shooters; their turnover woes continued — 19 more of them Sunday, leading to 17 Miami points — and though they made some hustle plays early, those were fewer and further between as the Hurricanes made a run.

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Louisville shot 29.8% from the floor and never threatened to make a significant run — much less win the game — after the midway point of the first half.

Jae’Lyn Withers led Louisville with 12 points. Brandon Huntley-Hatfield added 10. Guard El Ellis had seven points on 1-for-10 shooting and committed six turnovers.

Louisville coach Kenny Payne spent a long time in the locker room after the game, and more than 30 minutes passed between the final buzzer and the start of his postgame news conferenece.

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"There's not one player in that locker room that I don't love. Love," Payne said. "With that, they have to get better. And because of that I'm gonna take the criticism, the blame. Because I love them and I want them to figure it out and I want them to be successful. So I'm blaming myself. I'm not gonna blame them. And I hope they have enough pride and fight within themselves to understand what it is to be coached with love."

Key player

The Hurricanes didn’t have — and didn’t need — a single standout star. They got balanced scoring and made do without huge games from potent perimeter duo Isaiah Wong and Nigel Pack.

But the key to Miami’s offense is its balance, and three players scored in double figures.

If there was a tone-setter, it was forward Norchad Omier, who finished with 12 points on 6-of-7 shooting. Against Louisville’s bigger front line, the 6-foot-7 Omier did most of his damage around the rim, scoring all but one basket on layups and dunks.

"You know, we're the fourth-tallest team in college basketball, so they say," Payne said. "Well, I don't see shot-blocking, I don't see contesting at the rim. That's a problem for me."

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Key stretch

Leading 24-16 with 8:57 to play in the first half, Miami reeled off 10 straight points to take a 34-16 lead at the 6:05 mark of the half. The Hurricanes led by double digits for the final 8:15 of the first half, and Louisville never trimmed the deficit under 10 again.

By halftime, the Hurricanes were in front 42-23, and Louisville didn’t get closer than 20 points behind over the final 17:12 of the game.

It's become a trademark of this Louisville team to falter when its opponent makes a game-changing run. One a team seizes control of a game, the Cards have proven incapable of wresting it back.

"When teams go on those runs, we allow our mistakes to just pile up on each other and then we start to splinter off," Huntley-Hatfield said. "Once we start making those mistakes, we have to come together as a group, talk about what's happening so we don't keep making the same mistakes. And then we just have to take more pride in getting back in transition, running harder, playing harder and not making the same mistakes more than once."

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Key stat

Sydney Curry returned to the Louisville starting lineup after two games of coming off the bench. The change didn’t help his productivity.

Curry played 11 scoreless minutes and didn’t attempt a field goal. He had as many turnovers (two) as rebounds.

Entering the game, Curry was averaging 1.1 points per game in the paint this season, according to CBBAnalytics.com,

That’s down from 6.1 per game last season, when Curry averaged 14.8 paint points over his final five games.

Key quote

Louisville guard Mike James on Payne taking the blame for the Cards' winless start:

"It's not all on him. He says that because he loves us and he's gonna go to war for us, and he's told us that from Day 1. But it's not all on him. It's on us too. It's not all on the coaches. It's on the players. They can't go out there and play for us. So I don't really like when he says that, but that's just the type of guy he is."

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 falls to Miami in ACC opener