El Ellis breaks down performance against Duke

Louisville‘s nightmare season continued on Monday night with a 79-62 loss against Duke, one that left the team once again searching for answers.

One of the players who had a strong performance also factored into that mix. That was guard El Ellis, who scored 21 points in the contest on 8-of-16 shooting from the floor and 3-of-5 shooting from 3-point range.

“Tonight was a really big game for me,” Ellis said. “I just feel like I just needed to come out there and be calm, just let the game come to me. We didn’t win but I felt like we fought.”

Still, Duke controlled the glass 33-28 and outmanned Louisville across the board.

And it was the runs that ultimately proved fatal for Louisville against Duke.

“When the team went on a run we didn’t respond well, and that’s what happens when you don’t come out ready to play,” Ellis said.

Turnovers against Duke were costly

One thing that head coach Kenny Payne pointed to following the loss against Duke was turnovers.

The Cardinals simply had far too many of them, finishing the night with 12 turnovers. Payne broke down how it happened.

“I thought they denied us all over the court,” Payne said postgame. “I thought we refused to get in the bodies and man up and fight to get open. We work on it every day. I just thought that they put us on our heels. At times it looked like the environment intimidated us. Not acceptable. We tried to explain to them what kind of environment this is. We have a coach on the staff who played here,coached here.

“Went through everything that this program is and what it means to be here and how they were going to come out and play against us. Something didn’t click. We, as coaches, me personally, I take the blame for that. Couldn’t get them to play the way they needed to play with the fight that we needed to get a win.”

Louisville will return to action on Saturday at Georgia Tech with a game that tips off at 2 p.m. ET.