WBB 61 - Washington 53

[Sonja]

Well, that happened.

Louisville women's basketball overcame a difficult first quarter, won the second and third quarters convincingly and found themselves in charge of the contest against University of Washington 54-38 as the teams went into the final 10 minutes.

I've seen a lot of Cardinals women's basketball in my years and I'll side with Coach Jeff Walz when he commented (post game) that it might have been the worst fourth quarter he'd seen Louisville play since he took the head coaching job at Louisville.

Starting with that 54-38 lead, UofL would not score at all in the quarter until about two and a half minutes left, letting UW close the lead down to three at 54-51 with 3:08 to go. A 13-0 Husky run. Hailey Van Lith pried the lid off the basket with a pair of free throws, Emily Engstler would follow about a minute later with the only UofL field goal of the quarter, and the Cards would close out the fourth quarter, and game, with a pair of Mykasa Robinson free throws, and one by Kianna Smith.

Who let the Dogs out? Well, no one closed the gate door on them, and they just ran right through to bark at the visitors.

Basically, it comes down to three things. Three simple things. Three basic fundamentals of this game we love.

1) You have to put the ball in the basket. 1-11 from the floor in a quarter is not the way to protect a lead.
2) Make free throws. Going 5-8 is OK for a backyard challenge against Uncle Ed. It doesn't make the mark in the final minutes in a close Di game.
3) Play defense. That's how you shut down rallies and increase leads.

Walz tried everything to find a scorer in the final 10 minutes, even doing a wholesale five-for-five substitution in the fourth with A. Smith, Van Lith, Konno, Cochran and Hall departing and Robinson, Verhulst, K. Smith, Engstler and Dixon replacing them.

''We have to put a four-quarter game together,'' Walz also said after the narrow win. ''I thought for three quarters we were really, really good and then we kind of got away from what we were doing to build that lead.''

Credit Washington for never giving up. And credit the Cards for not completely folding and losing One that, no doubt, Louisville will learn from and grow from.

Dixon and Kianna Smith led the scoring for UofL with 13 each. It may have been Dixon's best game of her time at Louisville. She can nail the 6-8 footer consistently and that's what she did yesterday.

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one. The Cards flew into Seattle, got a challenge late, but won. Yes, there is a lot of work to do, but isn't there usually at the start of the season?

Take the "W". learn from it and move on.

--sonja--

 

[armensmith]

A lot of us throw darts when games and the players do not provide the results we want. Instead of doing that this time, I would like to give credit to a defense which did not have the lapse like the offense. Twenty turnovers compared to nine is a telling stat. Mykasa gave a tough 30 minutes that I am sure Washington would not want to face again. Jeff also chose to play Hailey and Kianna 30 plus minutes. Our two bigs collectively had 21 points and six rebounds against a rather tall player who played a rather surprising 29 minutes in the game. Finally I am not sure what the physical phenomena (my physics background) is that causes a basketball to vibrate within the cylinder and then pop out, but more than the usual number occurred on the Card's shots, particularly those of Hailey. They will start going through!

 

[KozmasAgain]

To early to worry about the team, playing tough opponents will help them grow. I like playing teams from other parts of the country because you go up against multiple styles of play. I would rather struggle early in the season than later in the season.

 

[2330859]

Nice report Sonja; agree 100%.

If you watched the WVU and Clemson men’s game, you could see virtually the same thing. Clemson was up by 10- 12 points with about 10 minutes to play, but lost by 7. The Mountaineers put a suffocating half court trapping defense on Clemson, but even when the Tigers had open looks and free throws; they could not score.

Van Lith is really struggling with here outside shot right now and it appears to be affecting the Card’s half court offensive flow. She has had some really good open looks that did not go down.

 

[Sonja]

Nice report Sonja; agree 100%.

If you watched the WVU and Clemson men’s game, you could see virtually the same thing. Clemson was up by 10- 12 points with about 10 minutes to play, but lost by 7. The Mountaineers put a suffocating half court trapping defense on Clemson, but even when the Tigers had open looks and free throws; they could not score.

Van Lith is really struggling with here outside shot right now and it appears to be affecting the Card’s half court offensive flow. She has had some really good open looks that did not go down.

Sophomore slump is what I'm guessing. The more she's out there the better I think HVL will perform.

--sonja--