Wake Forest went on the road after a tight, emotional, home loss.

The Deacons will return home with another loss and this one was far from tight.

No. 22 Louisville dispatched visiting Wake Forest 72-59 on Tuesday night at the KFC Yum! Center, jumping out to a 24-point lead in the first half and cruising to its 10th straight win.

Wake Forest (15-6, 7-3 ACC) tightened things up by outscoring Louisville 21-7 over the last 10 minutes of the game. That mattered for optics and metrics but the result had been decided, probably before Louisville (16-5, 9-1) took a 29-point lead early in the second half.

“Got off to a bad start. … Poor shot selection with that, that’s even more turnovers. I thought we were a step slow tonight in defensive transition,” coach Steve Forbes said on Wake Forest’s radio broadcast. “We had 15 (turnovers). That’s just too many to go on the road and win.”

Louisville got 18 points from Terrence Edwards Jr., including four 3-pointers. Reyne Smith, the lefty 3-point specialist, also had four 3s and wound up with 16 points. Point guard Chucky Hepburn had 14 points and eight assists.

The result was nearing completion when Hunter Sallis was ejected because of his second technical foul. Wake’s senior star picked up one technical in the first half, seemingly out of frustration with not getting a call after a shot in the paint.

With a little under 15 minutes left in the game, Sallis threw down a vicious one-handed dunk over Frank Anselem-Ibe. In celebration and with his team trailing by 25, Sallis slapped the top of his own head — earning a second technical and ejection.

“We’ve played 10 ACC games and Hunter Sallis has taken 25 free throws. That’s part of his frustration, he’s a really good player and a really good guy, and gets no calls,” Forbes said in his post-game appearance on the radio. “That doesn’t make it right. I’ve told him that, you can’t act out like that.

“(On) the second one, he made some type of gesture. But that all stems back to him getting a horrendous whistle in our league.”

The first issue for Wake Forest was turnovers — five of them in the first four minutes, to put a number on it.

That wasn’t much of the Deacons’ undoing, as it was a slow grind of a 6-5 game through the first six minutes. Things changed with Louisville heating up from 3-point territory.

The Cardinals surged ahead with a 12-0 run, which gave them a 26-11 lead. Nine of those points came on 3s, the first by Smith and the next two by Edwards.

Shortly after that, with Wake Forest trailing by 12, Ty-Laur Johnson picked the pocket of Smith near midcourt and was driving to the basket with Smith trailing. Johnson lost the ball on the way up for one of Wake’s nine first-half turnovers.

If things weren’t bad enough for the first 19 minutes, 57 seconds of the first half, Hepburn buried a 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer and send the game to the break with a 45-21 score.

TIP-INS: Efton Reid III also was called for a technical early in the second half, before Sallis’ ejection. He had his first double-double of the season, 11 points and 13 rebounds. … Sallis was Wake’s leading scorer, finishing with 13 points. … Davin Cosby Jr. and Parker Friedrichsen each made two 3s off the bench in the second half. Cosby had not made a 3-pointer since a Dec. 17 game against James Madison; Friedrichsen was a combined 0-for-6 in Wake’s last five games.