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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – In a season that has been trending downwards seemingly since it was tipped off, the Louisville men’s basketball program actually got to celebrate a victory of significance on Wednesday night. Traveling down to the Watsco Center to face Miami, the Cardinals were finally able to snap their lengthy losing streak in true road games, stunning the Hurricanes 80-71. It not only marked the first win in a true road game under head coach Kenny Payne, who was previously 0-14 in such contests, but snapped a lengthy 22-game true road game losing streak for Louisville. “For my players to go out and play as hard as they did, as together as they did, through adversity and all the doubt, and then come out and play the way they did, I’m proud of them,” Payne said. “Against a team that’s very good, one of the best offensive teams in the country. The only way to beat them is to fight for 40 minutes, and figure out what happens at the end. I’m proud of them.” For many, they could view this result as an anomaly on both sides. Louisville (6-9, 1-3 ACC) is still three games under .500, and has a gauntlet of games coming up to end the month of January. Miami, who sports one of the best offenses in college basketball, had an uncharacteristic off night shooting the ball and slumped down the stretch in a big way. However, Cardinals guard/forward Mike James isn’t viewing this result as a flash in the pan. In fact, he believes that, in a way, it should be the standard for Louisville throughout the rest of the season. “It feels good,” James said when asked how it felt to get a win over a team like Miami. “Most importantly for me, is it shows that, me and my team, we can compete with the best in the ACC. We have no excuses to play down from this level. We got to carry it on to the rest of ACC games and see what happens.”

Louisville certainly had an uphill battle to climb heading into their matchup with Miami. For starters, they were limited to just seven available scholarship players, as starting guard Tre White (groin) and reserve forward Emmanuel Okorafor (ankle) continued to be sidelined due to their respective injuries. The Cardinals had already lost Dennis Evans and JJ Traynor for the season due to shoulder injuries. Additionally, Miami was as hot as they came in the conference when it came to the offensive side of the ball. Heading into the matchup, the Canes were averaging 85.2 points per game and shooting 50.2 percent from the field, which ranked 14th and 13th nationally, respectively. Add in Louisville’s struggles on defense on top of their shorthanded status, and they entered as 16.5 point underdogs. However, even with everything stacked against them, it was Louisville who was clearly the better team that night. They connected on 49.1 of their field goal attempts to just a 38.8 percent mark from Miami, including 10-of-23 on three-point attempts by the Cards to just 11-of-34 from the Canes. In the second half alone, UofL shot 14-of-28 while UM was just 10-of-36.

The victory was powered by a pair of incredible performances from both James and forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield. James logged 26 points on 8-of-12 shooting and 5-of-6 on three-point attempts, while Huntley-Hatfield had 22 points on 9-of-13 shooting along with nine rebounds. “Being from like Orlando, it’s a big win for me,” James said. “They didn’t recruit me when I was getting recruited, so I had this game marked on my schedule. I was wanting to have a good game, so I came out, shots were falling, and my teammates kept building more and more confidence in me to keep shooting, so that’s what I did.” This season already has many feeling like it is a lost cause, while most fans and national pundits believe that Kenny Payne’s head coaching tenure is heading towards an inevitable end. Both could be true, and Wednesday’s win could wind up being an outlier on another bad season under Payne.

But in the same breath, it could also serve as the catalyst that sparks a resurgence from Louisville in the second half of the season. They no doubt have plenty of work to do to moving forward – especially with teams like NC State, UNC, Wake Forest, Duke, Virginia and Clemson on tap to end the month – but Payne believes that the statement win could be just what the Cardinals need moving forward. “For me the statement is, ‘what what did it feel like? What did that feel like to play that hard and come out with a win?’, he said after the game. “This is a big program with a lot of history, and we’re trying to build it back brick by brick. It’s hard, and we got people that will jump on and off the bandwagon, but that’s okay. My job is to lock in on who these kids are and get them to be the players that they need to be.”