LOUISVILLE, Ky.—Although the Bellarmine men's basketball team fell in an exhibition to Louisville by the score of 72-52 at the KFC Yum! Center on Tuesday night, Knights Head Coach Scott Davenport said he felt the game of basketball won tonight, referring to how tenaciously both teams played.
 
"That was two teams playing as hard and as much together and sharing the ball as  you can see, Davenport said.
 
The opposing coach agreed with Davenport's assessment. "I knew it was going to be a war," said Louisville Coach David Padgett, "And our players understood that. The thing I liked was that we didn't play well offensively and we didn't allow that to affect our defense."
 
Davenport said he also was pleased with his squad. "Our goal tonight was to be a better team than we were against Cincinnati, and to a man, we were."
 
Despite shooting just 37 percent for the game, Bellarmine was able to keep within striking distance of the Cardinals with team defense, coming up with 14 steals while forcing 20 Louisville turnovers.
 
The Knights played 10 different players, and all 10 hit the scoring column with Brent Bach leading the way with 12.
 
Ben Weyer added eight for Bellarmine with Parker Chitty chipping in seven.  Tyler Jenkins, Jarek Coles and Adam Eberhard each scored six with Eberhard also dishing out six assists.
 
The Cardinals got a solid effort from Deng Adel, who led all scorers with 21.  VJ King was the only other U of L player in double digit scoring with 14, but Anas Mahmoud just missed a double-double with nine points and 11 rebounds.
 
Bellarmine grabbed an early lead and held a 7-5 advantage at the first break in the action. However, Louisville came out of the first media timeout and strung together a 7-0 run and didn't trail the rest of the game.
 
The Knights trimmed the margin  to just a one-possession lead on a couple of different occasions, but Louisville closed the first half on 14-5 run to go into halftime with a 35-23 advantage.
 
In the second period, Louisville—which opened its season with a 101-64 exhibition win over Kentucky Wesleyan—extended its lead to as many as 21 with Bellarmine getting no closer than 10 points after halftime.
 
The Cardinals, finished shooting 45.3 percent from the field and held a 43-25 rebounding edge. Louisville also held a significant advantage at the free throw line, making 17 of 28 charity tosses while the Knights converted six of nine.
 
Neither team found the range from 3-point land.  Louisville sank just seven of 21 treys, and Bellarmine made just five of 24 attempts.
 
The Knights next action will be regular-season games against Saginaw Valley State and Northwood University in the GLVC-GLIAC Challenge in Indianapolis.  Bellarmine takes on SVSU on Friday, Nov. 10 and come back the very next day to play Northwood.
 
"We have two days to get ready," Davenport said. "We have games in Indianapolis on Friday and Saturday that have postseason ramification because they are Midwest Region games. They have to count; we're ready to go."
 
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