Key takeaways from Louisville women’s basketball’s second victory over UT-Martin.
The #2 ranked Louisville women’s basketball program was supposed to finally get the chance to play their second conference game on Tuesday against the North Carolina Tar Heels, but after a second cancellation by UNC that wasn’t going to happen. After the cancellation, Jeff Walz hopped on the phone and called Coach McMillen at UT-Martin to see if they wanted to run it back one more time.
Coach McMillen agreed and his team traveled back to Louisville for the second time in a month to face the Cards. The Skyhawks didn’t fare much better this time than they did a month ago, but right now I think it is more about getting the teams on the floor than anything.
This week has allowed Louisville to get in two key games, and it’s great to see momentum starting to be built and a rhythm being had. Being one of the most dangerous teams in the country, that should come as a bad sign for everyone else in the ACC.
Here are my 3 key takeaways from the Louisville’s 96-61 win over UT-Martin.
Three point shooting is back on track
In the four games before the COVID shutdown, the Cards had been in the 30% and 40% range, but the first two games out of the shutdown were way down.
The Cards shot an atrocious 18% against NKU and 19% against Bellarmine. I am going to chalk those two games up to the COVID rust because this team is much better than those two games.
Louisville came out and showed against UT Martin that they are an elite shooting team connecting on a season-high 50% from three-point range. They were led by Evans, who continued her push for Player of the Year, hitting 6 of her 7 attempts.
While the Cards have a good inside presence, the success of their season I believe is going to be dependent on the team’s outside shooting. If the trio of Dana Evans, Hailey Van Lith, and Kianna Smith struggle from downtown then Louisville could have a problem when they get into games against the top teams in the ACC as well as teams in the NCAA tournament.
As long as Louisville is able to build a rhythm (meaning, no more pauses), I don’t expect many more sub 30% three-point shooting games this season. When three’s fall like they did against UT-Martin there may not be anyone capable of beating Louisville.
Also relevant: Recap Louisville women’s basketball win over Bellarmine
The offense must continue to run through Dana Evans and HVL
Dana Evans once again proved why she is a candidate for National Player of the year, setting a career-high 29 points on 10 of 12 shooting and 6 of 7 from behind the arc. Not to mention, she added 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals to go with her 29 points.
Evans played today like the veteran leader everyone knows her to be. When she saw her teammates struggling on the offensive end in the first half she took the ball and took control of the game, scoring 22 of her 29 points. She is exactly what you want your senior leader to be when she is on the court, and also while she is cheering for her team from the bench.
While HVL struggled again from behind the arc for the third straight game, she brings more to the offense than just outside shooting. With her high-level ball handling skills, she’s able to consistsently make things happen by driving into the paint. Which in turn, takes a lot of pressure off of Evans. Van Lith still hit double figures today with 12 points and was 4-4 inside the three point line. Van Lith is an extremely explosive force and is the perfect compliment to Dana’s smooth style.
Louisville women’s basketball once again proves depth is key
With the deepest team Jeff Walz has had at Louisville there really are no throw-away minutes. 10 out of 12 Cardinals that played scored and 8 of the players logged double-digit minutes. Like most teams the starters of course got the bulk of the minutes with all playing over 20 minutes, every Louisville player got on the stat sheet. I think the highlight of the depth was when the last player off the bench, freshman Malea Williams out of Georgetown, got her first career points in this game. 11 players grabbed at least one rebound, and most got an assist.
The freshmen and transfers have come in to make an immediate impact helping to make the depth this great. The coming out of Liz Dixon in the last few games has also been refreshing as she struggled with her confidence last season. When you can play everyone on your roster a significant amount of minutes most games it really helps when you get deeper into the season and in the postseason. This helps with foul trouble, but Louisville has really controlled that as they didn’t have anyone with more than three fouls in the game.
The Cards played well on both ends of the floor and it was a relief to see threes beginning to fall again.
