{"id":198289,"date":"2026-03-19T20:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/198289\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T20:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:49:12","slug":"louisville-83-79-south-florida-mar-19-2026-game-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/198289\/","title":{"rendered":"Louisville 83-79 South Florida (Mar 19, 2026) Game Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BUFFALO, N.Y. &#8212; \u2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/mens-college-basketball\/player\/_\/id\/4712845\/isaac-mckneely\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Isaac McKneely<\/a> scored 23 points, and Louisville hung on to beat South Florida 83-79 on Thursday to win its first <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NCAA Tournament<\/a> game since Rick Pitino\u2019s final season as coach.<\/p>\n<p>              <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/mens-college-basketball\/player\/_\/id\/5107157\/ryan-conwell\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ryan Conwell<\/a> scored 11 of his 18 points in the second half and backup forward <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/mens-college-basketball\/player\/_\/id\/5311967\/sananda-fru\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sananda Fru<\/a> had 10 points and 10 rebounds for the Cardinals.<\/p>\n<p>              Louisville (24-10) showed signs of struggling without <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/ncaa-tournament-louisville-brown-404ab61212f3c56eabaa01910b921e0f\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">starting point guard <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/mens-college-basketball\/player\/_\/id\/5101761\/mikel-brown-jr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mikel Brown Jr<\/a>., who missed his fifth straight game with back issues. It was evident in the Cardinals&#8217; issues against South Florida\u2019s press in nearly squandering a 22-point lead over the final 11:25.<\/p>\n<p>              Brown is not expected to return for the second round on Saturday. That\u2019s when the East Region\u2019s sixth seed Louisville plays the winner of the game between third-seeded Michigan State (25-7) and North Dakota State (27-7).<\/p>\n<p>              <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/mens-college-basketball\/player\/_\/id\/4699760\/joseph-pinion\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Joseph Pinion<\/a> scored 27 points for South Florida (25-9) in a game in which the Bulls missed 20 of their first 21 3-point attempts. The Bulls were making just their fourth tournament appearance and first since reaching the Sweet 16 in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>              Louisville had lost three straight tournament games since an 89-75 first-round win over Jacksonville State in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>              &#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>              AP March Madness bracket: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. &#8212; \u2014 Isaac McKneely scored 23 points, and Louisville hung on to beat South Florida 83-79&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-198289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}