Lamb off, Connecticut loses at No. 24 Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Jeremy Lamb said he's embarrassed at his play. His Connecticut teammates don't have much to be proud of, either.

Lamb finished with seven points as his shooting woes continued and Connecticut fell behind big in an 80-59 loss to No. 24 Louisville on Monday night.

Lamb is 10 of 37 in his last three games and he was nowhere near his 17.6-point average against the surging Cardinals.

"Basically I've got to put the ball in the hole. I can't hit a shot," he said. "I'm in a bad slump right now."

Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun missed his second game on an indefinite medical leave of absence after he was diagnosed with spinal stenosis, but there's no way he could like what he saw in his team's most recent road trip without him.

Assistant coach George Blaney said he hopes the Huskies felt embarrassed after allowing Louisville to shoot 50 percent on its way to 51 points in the second half.

"That was a pretty good beating in the second half," Blaney said. "We've still won 15 games; we're not a bad team. We just played bad in the second half and I think we've got enough kids that are good enough to lead. I'm just really concerned about how we're playing offensively."

Freshman Ryan Boatright led the Huskies (15-8, 5-6 Big East) with 18 points. Fellow freshman Andre Drummond went scoreless, missing all six shots.

"He had a freshman night," Blaney said of Drummond's performance.

Gorgui Dieng returned from a sprained right ankle to score 15 points and freshman Chane Behanan added 12 rebounds as the Cardinals won their fifth straight. Louisville (19-5, 7-4) is quickly ascending the Big East standings after a rough start. While most of the 31 credential NBA personnel were scouting the Huskies, it was the Cardinals who outworked them all evening.

"Nobody wants to get embarrassed like that," said Connecticut forward Alex Oriakhi, who had 10 points. "We've got to help guys who are slumping."

While no one helped the Huskies, everyone contributed as Louisville looked similar to the team ranked fourth in the nation at 12-0 and nothing like the one that dropped five out of seven to tumble out of the poll three weeks ago.

Chris Smith scored 16 points, Kyle Kuric added 10 and Peyton Siva had nine assists while Behanan again made a mark coming off a 23-point, 11-rebound performance in a win over Rutgers.

"We caught a lot of breaks," Siva said. "They didn't really knock down a lot of shots."

Dieng appeared to have some early problems with his ankle, but was a key contributor in the Cardinals' decisive 21-4 run that gave them a 65-36 lead with 6:18 left.

Blaney fell to 3-2 in games he's coached this season. Roscoe Smith scored 10 points for the Huskies, but Behanan set the tone in the second half.

He got inside position for an offensive rebound and putback on the first play. After Boatright missed a 3, Behanan hit one that gave the Cardinals their first 10-point lead, 34-24, just over a minute into the second half.

Connecticut, which led by as many as three points in the first half, missed its first eight 3-point attempts until Lamb scored for the first time in the game with 16:48 left, then he completed an alley-oop pass to the 6-foot Boatright that cut it to 40-30.

The burst only temporarily slowed the Cardinals, who held Connecticut to 35.1 percent shooting for the night.

"We basically gave up," Boatright said. "We gave in. We just can't hit shots."