Louisville continued its hex in recent years against UConn with a 76-64 victory. OK, where do we start?

Ah yes, Kevin Ollie's first career ejection as head coach (he had earned a technical foul last season at DePaul for leaving the coach's box).

No doubt, Wayne Blackshear should have been called for a foul on Niels Giffey on the play in question. What happened next was pretty intense. Here's the reaction to Ollie's ejection, administered by ref Mike Stuart:

“I just thought it was a foul,” he said. “Niels is a pretty good shooter. He went up and, you know, got hit in the shoulder or the arm. Then, coming back, Shabazz (Napier) does the same thing later on and they didn’t call that foul. It happens, and we’re going to go from there.”

Added Ryan Boatright: “I was glad that he had our back. He fought for us, because some of those calls were ridiculous. The one that he got kicked out for was an obvious foul. It was crazy that they didn’t call it.”

In a statement, Stuart said Ollie was hit with “two unsportsmanlike Class A technical fouls. The first one was reacting to running down the sideline. The second one was coming on the floor to protest the call.”

Ollie admitted he earned the ejection -- sort of.

“I saw the replay, I think I jumped around a little bit, sprinted,” he said. “I don’t know if there was a warning or not, but I thought they gave me the first ‘T’ and I didn’t really have a chance to do anything and then the second one came.”

More Boatright: “He said he let his emotions get the best of him. He apologized for not being there when we needed him on the sideline. We just told him that we appreciated him for having our back, and really saying the things that we really couldn’t say. He showed how frustrated we were in not getting those calls. He’s a coach and he did the right thing.”

Rick Pitino's somewhat odd synopsis: "We were up (nine). I thought (the ejection) hurt us, actually, because we missed our free throws. We had momentum and let the crowd get in the game. Especially Kevin Ollie, you don't ever want to see him get thrown out. Jim Calhoun, you want to see get thrown out. I'm only kidding. Make sure you tell Jim that."

We would, but Calhoun -- perched in his usual seat on the press row baseline in the first half -- left the arena at halftime. No, he didn't join Ollie in the locker room after his ejection. Apparently, Calhoun left early because he's heading out on vacation tomorrow.

*** Bad call (or no-call) or not, UConn hardly deserved to win this game. The Huskies were outrebounded 45-30, with 16 of the Cardinals’ boards of the offensive variety. UConn also was outscored in the paint, 40-20.

“It’s not like they have Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar out there,” Ollie pointed out. “So, we’ve got to do a better job.”

*** DeAndre Daniels, fresh off a 23-point, 11-rebound effort in Thursday’s win at Memphis, picked up his second foul just over six minutes into the game and spent the rest of the first half on the bench. Without him, UConn had great difficulty penetrating Louisville’s active, 2-3 zone. The Huskies were forced into taking half their shots (14) from 3-point land, many of them late in the shot clock. UConn did hit six of them (three by Napier) to stay close and trail by six at the break.

Daniels finished with just three points for the game.

“Him sitting on the bench hurt our rotation,” said Ollie. “But, at the end of the day, he played the second half, and he’s got to play better. You’ve got to respond as a basketball player ... You get two fouls, I would’ve been boiling mad coming out at halftime. I would have got my third or fourth real quick on a charge, or throwing somebody out of the way. Something.”

*** Ollie said that Boatright will be heading back to Chicago on Sunday. It appears the funeral for Boatright's cousin, Arin Williams, is on Tuesday -- the same day UConn hosts Temple. But Boatright said he's not sure what he's going to do yet.

"I'm still contemplating if I want to miss Tuesday's game or not," he said. "I don't know exactly what I'm going to do."

*** The last time a UConn coach was ejected from a game was when Calhoun was booted from a Dec. 7, 2007 game with Northeastern by Wally Rutecki. Afterwards, Calhoun famously called Rutecki "incompetent."

Shabazz Napier sat out the last two practices (Wednesday and Thursday) after hurting his left shoulder early in Monday night’s Louisville game. He’s considered day-to-day with a shoulder contusion, and while there seems to be some good hope that he'll be able to play Saturday at Pittsburgh, nothing is certain at this point.

“Hopefully, he’ll practice (Friday) and have a good game on Saturday, but we wanted him to rest it, just in case,” Kevin Ollie explained. “He took a hard fall. We wanted to make sure everything structurally was fine.”

The injury came a little less than four minutes into the game, when Napier was fouled by Peyton Siva, crashed to the floor and had Louisville’s Wayne Blackshear land on his shoulder.

Here’s what Napier had to say about his injury:



And here’s some more of what Napier said, including a high degree of self-criticism from the Louisville game:

“It’s a struggle for me to move it to the side. It just hurts. I landed in an awkward position. (Blackshear) just landed right on my shoulder … it kind of pinched my rotator cuff. Whenever I rotate it, it hurts a lot. After the game it was hurting a lot, but now it’s cooled down. I’ve been moving it much better than I did after the game.”

UConn was originally slated to practice Friday morning at Gampel. Instead, the Huskies will go at 5 p.m. in Pittsburgh, to give Napier more rest and see if he’s able to get up some shots.

“Hopefully, I’m able to wake up with no pain and try to shoot, because I haven’t touched a ball in about three days. That’s kinda tough.”

“I’m kinda upset that I hurt myself during the Louisville game, because watching the tape, I felt like I didn’t give much. I looked slow and sluggish out there … I’m just trying to work harder now, look at myself in the mirror much closer now, because that was an awful performance by myself. No leadership, seemed like I didn’t keep my composure. Everything that I didn’t want to happen, happened. I just want to work harder for my teammates and the fan base, because they expected more and they should have gotten more, not only from myself but from the team.”

If Napier can’t play or is limited, UConn is confident others will step up and fill in for the team’s leading scorer.

“We have a motto around here: Next man up,” said Ollie. “If he’s not feeling well, not able to play to the level that we think he needs to play at, then R.J.’s got to play a bigger role, Brendan’s got to be ready to come off (the bench). We’ll find a way, like we’ve been doing the whole season.”

Said Tyler Olander: “It’s going to put a lot of pressure on the guards. Maybe we’re going to have to slow it down a little bit, just to give them a break. They can’t really be running up and down the whole time. We’re really going to have to execute in the halfcourt, slow them in transition, make them work on offense, definitely rebound. Just try to give Boat as much of a break as possible when he needs it.”

And Omar Calhoun: “We’ll see if he’s playing or not. We feel like as a group, we all stay together. Next man up, that’s what Coach Ollie always says.”

Soon after discussing his team’s resounding win over Seton Hall on Saturday afternoon, George Blaney was asked if he’d like to give a few words on Louisville, the Huskies’ next opponent.

“Ummm … no,” Blaney playfully groaned, a somewhat pained expression spread across his face.

It was as if Blaney, once again taking over UConn’s head coaching reins while Jim Calhoun is on indefinite medical leave, wanted to bask in the glow of UConn’s nice victory a few more moments before having to worry about all the problems Louisville will present Monday night.

He finally relented.

“Louisville, to me, always presents much more of a problem at home,” Blaney said. “Pressure works better at home than it does on the road, so we’re going to have to absorb pressure, be able to not allow people to go behind us as we did a couple of times (Saturday).”

Indeed, the Cardinals love to press and run under Rick Pitino, and also largely employ a 2-3 matchup zone. UConn will counter with the three-guard starting lineup it unveiled against Seton Hall, along with Tyler Olander -- its best passing big man -- at the four.

Louisville has won four straight, though not exactly against the iron of the league (at Pitt and Seton Hall, home against Villanova and Rutgers). It averages 9.5 steals per game, second in the Big East and sixth in the nation, and holds opponents to just 37-percent shooting, third nationally.

One thing the Cards aren't, however, is deep. They basically play seven players. No fewere than eight players have missed games due to injury this season, and three key ones (Wayne Blackshear, Rakeem Buckles and Mike Marra) have been lost for the entire season.

*** UConn is 6-6 all-time against Louisville. The Huskies had dropped four straight to the Cards before their 69-66 win in the Big East tournament championship game last March.

*** Pitino is 10-11 all-time against UConn: 0-6 while at Boston University, 4-0 while at Providence and 6-5 at Louisville.

*** Pitino is also 15-8 all-time against Jim Calhoun: 6-3 while Pitino was at BU and Calhoun at Northeastern; 1-0 while Pitino was at PC and Calhoun at Northeastern; 2-0 while Pitino was at PC and Calhoun at UConn; and 6-5 at Louisville.

It's worth mentioning this because, although Calhoun won't be on the sidelines on Monday, the game (and, indeed, all UConn's games while Calhoun is on medical leave) go on Calhoun's record. The three games Calhoun missed while on NCAA suspension this season did not go on his record, instead going to Blaney.

*** Monday night will mark just the third time the two teams have faced each other with neither one ranked. The other two times: Feb. 1, 2010 (an 82-69 Louisville victory) and Jan. 28, 2008 (a 69-67 UConn win in Hartford).