“They’re a very athletic team, they’re a different team than we’ve played,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said. “We always play a lot of different teams, and yet that’s one we never faced, so maybe it was a bad match-up for us.”

And that long, athletic team played an extremely stout defense that made ti difficult for the Spartans to get anything going.

The Spartans turned the ball over 15 times — they only made 14 shots, while shooting 28.6 percent.

Louisville forward Gorgui Dieng had seven blocks, and the Cardinals had nine steals in their zone and press defense.

“I thought we just missed some shots that we have hit,” Izzo said. “But I also thought they disrupted us a little bit and we just didn’t have enough guys that could play well.”

Senior forward Draymond Green said they knew the force Dieng could be and tried their best to prepare for him.

“We knew he averaged three and a half blocks a game,” Green said. “We’re not going to back down from anyone. We still took it out of him. He pulled off some great shot blocks. He played solid defense and he was the anchor in the middle for them.”

Part of the Louisville success was defense was able to tire Green out.

“For us, to have Draymond bring the ball up was great,” Louisville head coach Rick Pitino said. “We said, ‘Just turn them, just turn them, just turn them.’ Because then he wouldn’t have as much energy as he would other times.”

Izzo said his team ran out of gas after a moor ethan successful season, but he never thought his team was overachieving.

“I thought we could still get the ball inside, we could have early, (Dieng) was not blocking any shots then,” he said. “I can’t think of anybody who played really well. And I don’t know if it was because I feared it. I think it was because they deserve some credit. We deserve some blame.”