Opponents' hot streaks are dooming Louisville men's basketball. Why can't Cards respond?

His team faced a double-digit deficit already, and Kenny Payne knew from experience how quickly that could go from bad to worse.

So before he sent his Louisville men’s basketball players back on the KFC Yum Center court for the second half of a game last week against Maryland, he delivered an urgent message.

“Fight and be desperate and don’t let them make a run,” Payne said he told his players.

The Cards came up short on all three fronts. The Terrapins raced out to a 20-point lead early in the second half and never looked back.

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That’s been a frequent and fatal flaw for Louisville (0-8, 0-1 ACC), which opens conference road play Saturday at Florida State (1-9, 0-1).

Payne’s team has struggled this season to stop or respond to extended scoring runs by its opponents.

It’s been especially true of the power-conference foes that have dominated the Cards. But it’s not just them. Bellarmine had a game-changing run in the first half of its season-opening win over Louisville. Wright State reeled off a run in the closing minutes to win at the Yum Center.

These kinds of streaks happen to every team.

The key is learning to respond.

“When things get bad, I don’t see us fighting through adversity,” Payne said after last week’s loss to Miami. “I see us splinter. That’s a problem for me.”

And an ongoing issue for his team.

There are tangible reasons for it.

Louisville’s offense is wildly inconsistent. According to college basketball analytics site KenPom.com, the Cardinals rank 298th out of 363 Division I teams in offensive efficiency.

They commit turnovers on 24.6% of their possessions (356th in D-I), and their effective field-goal percentage — a number that gives extra weight to 3-point shots given their added value — is 42.3% (349th).

That lends itself to scoring droughts, and those allow teams to open up leads that quickly become insurmountable for a team with limited scoring options.

But there’s a psychological aspect, too.

“It's just letting our mistakes pile up on each other,” swingman Mike James said. “It's just getting down on ourselves. They go on a run, we got to break that run and try to go on a run of our own. When that happens, we just got to try to change it.”

A look at how the Cards have struggled to do so:

Bellarmine (67-66 loss)

Stretch: 13:03 - 6:51, first half

Run: 21-3

Result: The Knights trailed 15-11 when the run started and led 32-18 when it ended. They’d go into halftime with a 41-30 cushion.

Response: The Cards didn’t make a push in the immediate aftermath of the Bellarmine run, but they ultimately came to life late in the game. Trailing 67-55 with 4:41 to play, Louisville held the Knights scoreless the rest of the way. But the run was too little, too late; the Cardinals lost 67-66.

Wright State (73-72 loss)

Stretch: 2:37 - 0:00, second half

Run: 8-2

Result: Trailing 75-70, Wright State held Louisville to a single basket the rest of the way and won the game on a buzzer-beating jumper by guard Trey Calvin.

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Response: There was no coming back from this one, given the timing. To Louisville’s credit, it rallied to take a late five-point lead after blowing a 10-point second-half cushion to trail by one with 3:47 to play.

Appalachian State (61-60 loss)

Stretch: 17:38 - 6:24, first half

Run: 24-10

Result: This was less a scoring burst than a prolonged stretch of game control. But it did open up what had been a close game in the opening minutes to put App State in front 29-14. The Mountaineers led by as many as 16 points in the first half and 13 at halftime.

Response: Easily Louisville’s strongest bounce-back from a stretch of opponent dominance. The Cards outscored App State 35-23 in the second half and pulled within a point on an El Ellis jumper with 24 seconds to play. But Ellis’ chance to make one more clutch play — he made a driving layup that would have given Louisville the win — came just after time expired.

Arkansas (80-54 loss)

Stretch: 10:37 - 4:29, second half

Run: 17-0

Result: Arkansas already had solid control of the game when it reeled off 17 consecutive points to stretch a 10-point margin to 27. The Cardinals committed eight turnovers during that span. They finished with 22 turnovers that led to 29 Razorback points.

Response: This one was a knockout punch. Louisville never got closer than 20 points the rest of the way.

Texas Tech (70-38 loss)

Stretch: 8:27 - 0:05, first half

Run: 17-2

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Result: The Cardinals hung tough in the opening minutes of the first half but ultimately lost the game by 32 points, in large part because of a run that took the Red Raiders from a five-point to a 19-point cushion by halftime. Ellis made a jumper with 4:22 to play in the first half to account for Louisville’s only points during a prolonged Tech run.

Response: Nonexistent. The Red Raiders opened the second half on an 11-0 run to stretch their lead to 32. From there, the Cards trailed by as many as 38 points and never got closer than 27.

Cincinnati (81-62 loss)

Stretch: 0:00, first half - 13:09, second half

Run: 21-5

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Result: It looked like Louisville would take a lead into halftime before the Bearcats’ David DeJulius buried a deep, buzzer-beating 3-pointer to put Cincinnati in front 31-30 at the break. UC piled on to start the second half, going ahead 49-35 on a layup at the 13:22 mark.

Response: Louisville never got closer than 10 points the rest of the way, trailing by as many as 20 in the final two minutes.

Maryland (79-54 loss)

Stretch: 19:35 - 16:32, second half

Run: 15-6

Result: The Terrapins led by 11 at halftime, but Louisville hadn’t let Maryland run away. The Terps did exactly that in the opening minutes of the second half with a spectacular shooting display. Maryland made its first five 3-pointers in the second half to take a 20-point lead and all but end the game.

Response: After the Cards cut the lead to 17, the Terps erupted again and led by as many as 33 points. Maryland went in front by 21 with 14:33 to play and the game was never closer than that.

Miami (80-53 loss)

Stretch: 8:15 - 4:25, first half

Run: 12-2

Result: The Hurricanes stretched an eight-point lead to 18. During that stretch, Louisville was 0-for-3 from the floor and committed two turnovers. Miami would lead by as many as 21 points in the half and by 19 at halftime.

Response: Delayed. The Cards fell behind by as many as 32 points in the second half and were down 76-46 with 3:40 to play. A combination of some scrappy play, a full-court press and Miami's sloppiness allowed a small run to get to within 23 before the final deficit settled at 27.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball: Opponent scoring streaks dooming cardinals