[1/12/05] HATTIESBURG If Southern Miss basketball coach Larry Eustachy has aspirations of transforming the Eagles into a national power, he has much to learn.

On Tuesday night, Rick PItino and the Louisville Cardinals took Eustachy and USM to school.

Louisville shot an unconscious 57 percent from the field, nailed 31-of-33 free throws and scored 32 points off turnovers in a 107-62 throttling, the worst loss in Southern Miss history, in front of a national television audience and 6,803 at Reed Green Coliseum.

“We had our best practice of the season yesterday and this was probably as good a game as we have played since I have been at Louisville,” third-year Cardinals coach Rick Pitino said. “We had an awesome practice yesterday, talked about a lot of things and got our rewards for it tonight in a totally unexpected performance.”

The Eagles (9-6, 0-3) suffered their fourth straight loss, and third in conference. They are now tied with Tulane and East Carolina as the only three winless teams in C-USA.

“There is a cloud over this program that has been lingering here for a long time. There’s an attitude here that it’s OK what happened here tonight,” Eustachy said. “There’s an attiude from our locker room to everywhere around here that this is OK. It’s not OK. As long as I am here, this will not be accepted.”

Francisco Garcia, a junior who is considering skipping his senior season to enter the NBA draft, led five Cardinals in double figures with 25 points. Ellis Myles scored 20, Larry O’Bannon netted 16, Taquan Dean scored 13 and Brandon Jenkins came off the bench to score 12.

Rashaad Carruth paced Southern Miss with 25 points and hit the first two shots of the game as the Eagles went ahead 4-0. They held a 7-3 lead before Louisville took control.

Behind the Cardinals’ swarming, relentless defense, Louisville used a 19-1 run to take a 22-8 lead.

“We weren’t intending on pressing from the beginning,” Pitino said. “We went to it and tried to change up our presses and got some good runs. Our players were very active and that created opportunities.”

Louisville went ahead 51-22 with 4 minutes, 11 seconds to play in the first half. Eustachy was hit with a technical foul for arguing a no call on what he thought was a goal-tend. Garcia hit both free throws and the Cardinals went into halftime with a 60-27 advantage.

“We came out really focused tonight,” Garcia said. “No matter what kind of lead we have, we have to stay focused throughout the entire game and can’t let up.”

Much to the Eagles’ chagrin, the Cardinals didn’t let up.

Louisville quickly built the lead to 77-37 less than five minutes into the second half. When the Cardinals went ahead 80-37, Pitino called off the press.

“We got beat on the boards, second chance points killed us and turnovers killed us,” Carruth said. “We just didn’t play well at all. You saw what happened.”

The defeat was the worst so far this season for Southern Miss. Alabama-Birmingham’s 83 points were the most allowed by USM, until Tuesday night.

“The game seems to break us down, not against William Carey and West Alabama, but a Louisville with their height, length and strength really gives us problems,” Eustachy said. “They take us out of what we want to do.”

Michael Ford scored 13 points in the loss and Mildon Ambres came off the bench to score 10 for USM.