Louisville is no longer the 4-28 team it was a season ago.The Cardinals have shown a lot of promise through the first four games of the 2023-24 campaign, and they will look to keep taking steps in the right direction on Monday when they face Indiana in the third-place game of the Empire Classic in New York.After winning two of three games to start the season, Louisville (2-2) faced its toughest challenge yet, meeting No. 19 Texas on Sunday in the opening round of the Empire Classic.It looked like the Cardinals were going to escape with a win when they led by one in the final seconds, but the Longhorns’ Max Abmas sank a jumper at the buzzer to tag Louisville with a heartbreaking 81-80 loss.Still, Cardinals coach Kenny Payne likes the direction his team is headed in.”That’s the team I want to show up every night,” Payne said. “We’re not perfect, we’ve got a long way to go, but we have the components to cause people problems.”The Hoosiers (3-1) had been causing problems until running into No. 5 UConn on Sunday. The Huskies cruised to a 77-57 victory to snap Indiana’s season-opening three-game winning streak, and unlike Payne, Hoosiers coach Mike Woodson was anything but pleased with the effort his team showed.”This was a wake-up call,” Woodson said during a postgame radio show. “I’ve got a lot of work to do with this team.”