LOUISVILLE — Edgar Sosa and Jerry Smith made sure Louisville didn’t leave this one up to the officials.

Sosa scored 15 points while Smith added 14 as the senior guards led the Cardinals past reeling Connecticut 82-69 on Monday. Louisville bolstered their flagging NCAA tournament hopes with the kind of steady play down the stretch the Cardinals have lacked at times during their roller coaster season.

“Coach (Rick Pitino) told us ’Play this game like this game is to get to the Final Four,”’ Sosa said. “That’s how bad we needed it.”

The Final Four might be a reach this season, but Louisville (14-8, 5-4 Big East) played like it wants to be around in March. The Cardinals turned it over just 10 times and harassed the Huskies (13-9, 3-6) into 38 percent shooting.

“Very few teams can run up and down with UConn,” Pitino said. “When they run up and down with them, they usually get beat.”

Not this time.

The Cardinals never trailed, using a hot start to build an early 13-point lead then finishing off the Huskies to take some of the sting out of a deflating loss to No. 6 West Virginia on Saturday.

Louisville led the Mountaineers by 11 late in the second half before the Mountaineers roared back, using a couple of fortuitous calls by officials to steal a 77-74 victory.

Pitino was livid afterward, calling the officiating “bogus” after referees twice awarded the Mountaineers possession on disputed calls.

He was decidedly calmer on Monday, maybe because his team finally learned how to play with a lead.

“We’ve been in so many wars, it would have been very easy to put in a clunker,” Pitino said.

Instead, it was the Huskies who stalled.

Jerome Dyson led UConn with 18 points and Stanley Robinson had 14 points and 11 rebounds but UConn fell to 2-3 without coach Jim Calhoun, who is on indefinite medical leave. The Huskies have lost six of their last eight overall.

UConn turned it over 18 times to help put a serious dent in its NCAA Tournament hopes.

“We need a little bit more discipline without turning the ball over,” said interim coach George Blaney. “We need to make sure we play better basketball. We can’t be giving a team that many more possessions, especially a team that runs a good offense.”

While Louisville blazed early, the Huskies struggled. UConn shot just 26 percent in the first half but managed to stay in it at the free throw line, where it went 19 of 23 in the first half.

The Cardinals appeared to be in trouble when center Samardo Samuels trudged to the bench after picking up his third foul with 7:34 remaining in the half, but Louisville managed to keep things going thanks to a re-energized Smith.

The senior guard has struggled at times this season, but was dynamic early. Often chastised by Pitino for settling for 3-pointers, Smith drove to the basket consistently and either made the layup or got the foul.

“I think Jerry’s so-called shooting woes in his mind allowed him to be a better basketball player because it got him very aggressive driving the basketball,” Pitino said. “He will still be able to shoot, but this takes his game to the next dimension.”

Louisville led 48-34 at the break and the lead eventually ballooned to 68-49 on a steal and lay-in by guard Peyton Siva with 13:30 remaining.

UConn put together a 15-4 run behind the play of Dyson, who scored eight points during the burst to pull the Huskies within 72-64.

For a few moments it appeared the Cardinals were in danger of letting another big second half lead crumble. Finishing off quality opponents has been a problem all season for Louisville, which couldn’t hold on to leads over Pittsburgh and Villanova last month.

That was so January.

When things got tight on Monday, the Cardinals ramped up the defense, slowed down the pace and held on.

“We knew they’d have their run, we sustained it and just went back at them,” Smith said. “We didn’t want to let them relax. We wanted to attack.”

Sosa hit a difficult fadeaway to stop the bleeding then fed Samuels for a breakaway dunk to push the lead back to 77-66. Samuels then hit the deck to draw a charge on Dyson. Reggie Delk put the finishing touches on the victory with a nifty backdoor cut for a layup that made it 79-66 with 5 minutes to go and snuff out UConn’s hopes for its first true road victory of the season.

UConn made just one field goal over the last 9 minutes.

“We are good, we’re just not playing very well,” Blaney said. “We really need to get that confidence back.”