Kenny Payne and the Cardinals entered this game trying to shake off that head scratching performance against the Virginia Cavaliers last weekend. Louisville has lost five in a row and they desperately need to get back in the win column to get their confidence levels higher, but they cannot find a way to put it all together, even when they're playing better than they usually do as this game continued to get closer down the stretch.

Louisville has had some ups and many downs this season, but one thing that has remained constant is their slow starts in the first half, which is one of the main reasons why they've been having a hard time beating anyone recently. This issue shows up in basically every game, so it's nothing new from them, but it's hard to understand how a team continues to let the same thing plague them over and over and over again. The Cardinals always look at least a little bit better in every second half, but the two halves have been polar opposites for Kenny Payne's squad and he hasn't made any changes to solve it.

Clemson has somewhat struggled with Kenny Payne leading the way since he arrived at Louisville, as they were one of the four teams that actually lost to Louisville's 4-28 team a season ago, but that game was played in the KFC Yum! Center. This time around Louisville was inching closer towards the end of the game, but ultimately fell short in the end, because the Cardinals had to erase a 12 point deficit at the half. Make that six losses in a row for Louisville and we've already stated that barring a miracle, nothing is going to change until the start of April, maybe.

It actually wasn't a typical bad start from Louisville, but rather an acceptable one with the game being pretty close for majority of the first 20 minutes of action. The score was 19-18 in the Tigers favor with just over four minutes left in the first half. Both Louisville and Clemson were struggling offensively at the beginning of the game so neither team could pull away initially, but Clemson went on a run at the end of the half due to careless turnovers from Louisville that are a common theme at this point. A one point lead was increased all the way to twelve points by the time the half ended. Even when Louisville has a decent start, they have trouble keeping that up for entire halves and it's been an issue for them all season. Louisville's coaching staff's inability to stop the bleeding has shown up in every single game and the only time they seem to make some adjustments are at halftime, because the in-game adjustments have been nonexistent for the past year and a half. The Cardinals had one of their best starts to a game in the last month and still, they were down by double digits at the intermission. It's almost inevitable. It’s worth noting that Louisville had no assists in the first 20 minutes, which should be impossible for a Power Five team, but this team has found a way to make impossible things possible this season.

Coming out of halftime, Clemson had found their offensive rhythm and they quickly extended that 12 point lead to 22 points in the first seven minutes. Louisville looked like they were well on their way to get blown out once again, but Tre White took majority of the scoring load to keep them hanging around with the Tigers. Majority meaning mostly all of it, because Louisville didn't have one single player in double figures but White. He finished the game with his Cardinal's career high 29 points, 14 rebounds, and two of Louisville's four total assists in the game. Louisville's next highest scorer was Brandon Huntley-Hatfield with just seven points, one of his more quiet games this season. The Cardinals slowly started chipping away at that 20 point lead from Clemson by getting stops on the defensive end and finding ways to get to the free throw line. Louisville and Clemson's stats were very similar in this game, as they both made 22 field goals and shot poorly from behind the three-point arc. Clemson hit 21/25 free throw attempts compared to Louisville's 18/23. The difference in this game was that the Tigers hit three more shots behind the arc than the Cardinals (5 to 2). Louisville's defense for the first time in a while was actually good enough to win this game, but they only shot 34% from the field to compliment it. If Tre White had one more player to score with him, Louisville would've had enough to maybe squeak out a win, but that's extremely hard to do when you have four total assists as a team. By the time Louisville got the deficit under five points, there was only 25 seconds left in the game. Clemson pulled this one out by hitting their free throws late and they had a comfortable lead for most of the game, so it made it much easier.

Louisville's struggles continue and continue, with little to no improvement from their all-time worst season last year. This program is at rock bottom as of now and they'll have to do something about it to give this great fanbase something to cheer for, because it's been almost two years since this top ten program of all time had a signature win.

The Cardinals will be back in action at home on Saturday night against Florida State at 8:00 P.M.