The odds were not in Oregon’s favor. Louisville, after all, was the tournament’s number one overall seed, led it’s first two tournament games wire-to-wire and runs a pressure defense that has given coaches across the country night terrors.

But it wasn’t the press that doomed Oregon in the Ducks Sweet 16 loss to Louisville. Oregon was able to solve the press consistently get the ball across half court and — at least by this team’s standards — limited the turnovers, but once the Ducks got the ball across halfcourt Louisville forced them to play a more up-tempo game than the Ducks were accustomed to.

In the first half, the Ducks missed shots, blew opportunities at the free throw line and couldn’t get an offensive rebound to save their tournament lives. At the other end of the court too, Oregon was overpowered on the glass — and that’s not something the Ducks were used to.

The result was a confident group of bigs for Louisville, who dominated the paint in the first half, scoring all but one of the Cardinals field goals inside the painted area. Even with the Cardinals Peyton Siva sitting on the bench with two fouls, Louisville jumped out of the gates and opened up a 16 point lead early in the first half.

“I didn’t feel like we put our best foot forward in the first half,” head coach Dana Altman said. “We dug ourselves a hole and weren’t able to come back.”

It didn’t help matters that both Johnathan Loyd and Dominic Artis were in foul trouble early — Artis had two first half fouls and Loyd had three — but Oregon cut back into the lead  and looked to be on pace to go into the half down only ten, but another late run by the Cardinals gave Rick Pitino’s team a 14 point lead at the intermission.

The Ducks found some momentum midway through the second half, sparked by Damyean Dotson finally finding the score sheet, but the Cardinals were consistently able to turn missed Duck shots into baskets of their own and opened up an 18 point lead prompting Altman to call a timeout.

Oregon caught fire out of the timeout and cut the deficit to just six points, but just as they did every time Oregon went on a run, the Cardinals went on one of their own and pushed their lead back out to double digits while Oregon stopped making shots at their end.

Led by gritty performances from Arsalan Kazemi and E.J. Singler, Oregon outscored the Cardinals in the second half and came closer to beating a Pitino-coached team in the Sweet 16 than any other of the 10 teams to try, but ultimately the Ducks first half missteps were too much to overcome.