ACC women's basketball notes: What's up with Louisville?
Are the Cardinals in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament?
Sitting courtside at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem and taking questions via Zoom, Louisville coach Jeff Walz did not waste any time or mince any words when assessing his team’s performance in its 68-57 loss at Wake Forest on Thursday night.
“They just whipped our ass. It’s what it is,” a clearly frustrated Walz told reporters. “We did nothing defensively. It started in the second quarter, actually, where we just refused, offensively, to do what we have worked on. We fight to get a lead, and then we shoot ourselves in the foot. We had lack of communication on defense. Everything that you could imagine that could go wrong, went wrong… We’re our own worst enemy.”
It was the first time ever that Wake Forest has beaten Louisville in women’s basketball. Jewel Spear – last season’s leading scorer in the ACC – dropped 34 points as the Demon Deacons snapped a three-game losing streak.
Wake nearly beat a then-ranked No. 1 Louisville team at the Joel in 2021, but Dana Evans dragged the Cardinals to a two-point win.
On Thursday, Louisville led by 12 points with 7:21 to play in the third quarter, but then Wake Forest broke off an 18-0 run and ran away with the game. This time, there was no Dana Evans. Louisville turned the ball over 20 times and shot 12.5% from 3-point land.
Hailey Van Lith, anointed as the next star player for Louisville, finished with just eight points on 4-of-12 shooting in 35 minutes. She also had six turnovers to five assists and two steals. None of her teammates stepped up to save the day either, as Olivia Cochran was the only other Louisville player to score in double digits with 11 points.
“We go brain dead,” Walz said. “We don’t have urgency. We don’t have the killer instinct.
“It’s maddening… Our traps are so bad.”
The game also featured Walz getting a technical foul in the fourth quarter. After the game, he told reporters that what drew the tech was him telling a referee, “You’re missing a really good game and I feel bad for these kids. It’s unacceptable.”
Since Walz became the Cardinals’ head coach in 2007, they have missed the NCAA Tournament just once, in 2010. And when Walz’s teams have made the tournament, they’ve never been one-and-done, always winning at least one game. ESPN currently projects Louisville to be a No. 8 seed in this year’s tournament, but more losses like this one would certainly hinder Louisville’s chances of continuing its postseason streak. Few expected Louisville’s run to be in jeopardy this year, considering they were coming off a Final Four appearance and were tabbed to win the ACC this season.
Louisville ranks 25th in defensive rating this season according to HerHoopStats, but is 338th nationally in 3-point defense, allowing opponents to shoot 35% from behind the arc. The Cardinals have also allowed 523 made field goals this season, which is the 33rd most in the nation.
“It’s my fault,” Walz said. “We have to fix it, because I’m not used to this.”
Notes…
With it’s win over Pitt, UNC has its first six-game winning streak in ACC play since 2013. In that 72-57 victory on Thursday, Kennedy Todd-Williams scored 22 points, marking the 12th time since the start of the 2021-22 season that she has either matched or reset her career-high scoring mark.
Niele Ivey on Notre Dame’s road win at Florida State on Thursday, the Irish’s first win this season without Dara Mabrey, who is out for the remainder of the season after suffering an ACL injury: “I thought that was a statement win. That’s a really great Florida State team. I’ve been so impressed watching them all season. To hold that type of team to 47 points is a testament to our defensive identity… I really loved the toughness and resilience that we showed in the second half. We started getting stops defensively and got out and ran.”
In FSU’s loss to the Irish, freshman phenom Ta’Niya Latson was held to just nine points. She had scored in double digits in each of her previous 22 collegiate games.
Kenny Brooks on Ashley Owusu’s progression in recovering from a hand injury: “It isn’t fair to ask her to come back into a high intensity game like this when she’s only had a week of practice. She was not cleared until a day before the Pitt game. We have been trying to do things to get her extra reps, so she can get going. She’s got to get her wind, and once she gets her wind I think she’ll be able to contribute. It’s a little difficult because she plays four games for us and then we have to reinvent ourselves and now all of a sudden, we have to throw her back in the middle of a highly contested ACC race.”
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