Our #5 ranked Cards didn’t miss a beat tonight in Music City as they roll past the HillToppers 78-55 for their sixth straight win. Tonight kicked off a new four game deal between these in-state rivals. Our Cards have won four straight and 21 of 24 overall in this series.

On a night where the Louisville back-court duo of Siva and Smith had trouble getting things going it was the front-court players that would step up and provide the offense in this one. Wayne Blackshear had 18 points and 8 rebounds, Chane Behanan had 14 points and 7 rebounds, and Montrezl Harrell along with some monster dunks had 13 points and 6 rebounds. Russ Smith did end up with 20 points tonight but most of them were junk points at the end of the game as he was involved in a foul fest with the WKU team. This was his 12th straight game scoring in double digits. His counterpart Siva didn’t have a great showing in the Music City tonight as he had his first foul out of the season scoring just 5 points. The Cards shot 27-53 for 50.9% from the field, 5-14 for 35.7% from 3 and were 19-27 from the free-throw line for 70.4%. The Cards did a very good job tonight at finding the open man and shooting good shots. The Cards defense was solid tonight holding the Toppers to 55 points while forcing 20 turnovers and getting 10 steals. The Hilltoppers had very few looks where they didn’t have a Louisville defender in front of them and didn’t have an easy time getting to the basket.

With this game behind the Cards it’s now time for the meat and potatoes portion of the schedule to begin. And it starts with arch rival UK coming to the Yum Center next Saturday. Chants broke out tonight in the Bridgestone Arena from the Cards faithful after the game of BEAT UK! And the social media impact of UK week has already seen an explosion as the term #BEATUK was trending about a half an hour after the WKU game tonight. Should have my UK preview up on Monday. Go Cards!