LEXINGTON, Ky. — Maybe Stanford should have been in the NIT after all.

The Cardinal saved its worst game of the season for its most important game of the season: the first round of the NCAA Tournament on March 15. Stanford played lethargically all afternoon, getting beat to seemingly every rebound and loose ball, yielding open shot after open shot on defense and allowing Louisville’s full-court press to force 22 turnovers. Louisville hardly broke a sweat, using a 22-3 run to build a 46-20 halftime lead and cruise to a 78-58 victory.

“It kills me because I didn’t see it coming,” head coach Trent Johnson said. “The thing that bothers me the most is that Louisville was flat-out the aggressor from the start. And that bothers me a lot.”

The team couldn’t decide post-game whether it was a Rupp Arena packed with Louisville fans arriving from their campus just 75 miles away, the 9:30 a.m. Pacific (12:30 p.m. local) game time, the 8 a.m. pre-game practice, the Cardinal’s youth, its lack of NCAA experience or simply a bad matchup against a tough Louisville team that did them in. But the autopsy result was secondary: Stanford’s season had come to a crushing, heartbreaking close.

“We just didn’t handle the pressure well,” sophomore guard Anthony Goods said. “We may have had some jitters in the beginning, but that doesn’t excuse the whole 40 minutes of basketball. You hate to go out like this, but we just have to use it as fuel for the fire.”

Coach Johnson took the blame for his team playing soft.

“We talked all week, once we got the announcement that we were in, and I knew it was going to be a concern trying to settle them down,” he said. “It was really obvious that they were tight and weren’t relaxed to start.

“But I didn’t get the message across. I thought we were in a situation where we were going to play well, quite frankly. And we didn’t.”

When asked how he could have better prepared his team, Johnson seemed even more at a loss.

“I probably would’ve given them drugs and let them drink a beer or two,” he joked. “Maybe that would’ve relaxed them a little more.”

Louisville beat Stanford in the paint 36-22 on the game and 22-2 on first-half points off turnovers. Both factors were key to an early lead. Stanford committed eight turnovers in the first eight minutes, allowing Louisville to never look back from an early 12-2 lead. Center David Padgett and fellow big-man Earl Clark scored 15 of Louisville’s 19 points during that time, and many of them came on turnover-induced fast breaks.

“Full-court pressure was not something we’ve seen in games, but we worked on it in practice,” Goods said. “We planned on attacking it, but we got out there and started thinking too much. We started playing to their advantage when we started thinking, and they forced some turnovers.”

Many observers, including coach Johnson, expected Louisville’s pressure to cause Stanford headaches, so perhaps Stanford’s biggest disappointment came in the halfcourt, where Padgett — and not Brook Lopez — was the game’s dominant big man. The wily junior’s pump fake had the freshman Lopez and his teammates leaping into the air time after time, resulting in fouls and easy lay-ups.

Brook and fellow centers Robin Lopez, a freshman, and Peter Prowitt, a junior, combined for 13 of Stanford’s 22 fouls, and Louisville scored 21 points from the charity stripe.

“They started the game by pounding the ball inside,” senior forward Fred Washington said. “Padgett got a couple of and-ones that got them going early. We couldn’t stop their momentum.”

Brook Lopez led all players with 18 points on 8-of-15 shooting, but only four of his points came in the first half, when the outcome was still in doubt. Meanwhile, Louisville leaned on its depth, as five players cracked double figures (Padgett and freshman guard Edgar Sosa led Louisville with 16 apiece), and 14 players saw action, with the starters resting for the Texas A&M tilt two days down the line.

Perhaps one of the more positive consequences of the NCAA Tournament was Brook Lopez’s post-game decision to return to Stanford next year. Coach Johnson said after the loss that he planned to meet with his freshman star in the next week to discuss the possibility of declaring for the NBA draft. ESPN’s Chad Ford projected Lopez the eighth overall pick last month.

“I want what is best for him,” Johnson said. “If he is capable of being in a position where he can be one of the top 16 players drafted, then shame on anybody who would not want him to achieve that or who would not want that for him. A Stanford education in one year is probably like a lot of places in four years. Trust me, I know — I graduated from Boise State.”

But Lopez insisted he had far too much still to learn on the college hardwood and announced that he would be coming back.

“I can’t really see myself in the NBA next season,” Lopez said. “I’m really looking forward to coming back. We haven’t really done anything in college yet, and there’s so much more we need to do.”