Louisville women’s basketball comes up a basket short in season opener against defending national runner-up, Arizona.
The day CardNation had been waiting for finally arrived. It was game day for The Ville as they faced #22 Arizona in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Louisville women’s basketball fans finally got to see what the post-Dana Evans era was going to look like, and man it wasn’t pretty.
Most fans on both sides were expecting a barn burner of scoring from both teams. The reality was both teams struggled badly on the offensive end in the first quarter. Louisville led as the first quarter ended 9-8. The second quarter saw a little bit more scoring from both teams. Arizona took a 25-22 lead into the half though.
As the teams came out of the locker room in the third quarter, Arizona pushed their lead out to 6 points. The Cards cut the lead down to 2, but then Arizona jumped back up by 6. Louisville continued to trim Arizona’s lead and went into the fourth down 41-40.
The fourth quarter started with several ties and lead changes, till the Cards jumped out to a 4 point lead. It looked like Louisville women’s basketball was going to get a runout to take a 6 point lead, but Arizona broke up the play with a steal. The Wildcats scored 4 quick points to tie the game up again.
Arizona had a 2 point lead until Hailey Van Lith tied the game with two free throws with 13 seconds left. The Cards still had a little luck in them when Arizona missed 3 shots as time expired.
Overtime saw pretty much the same as the rest of the game. Lead change, tie, lead change and tie. The Wildcats had a 2 point lead 61-59, and Louisville had their chance as they missed 2 layups to end the game. Louisville’s leading scorer was Hailey Van Lith with 19 points. Arizona’s leading scorer was Cate Reese with 21 points. I got a few takeaways from this game, but none of them are on the positive side. Here are my takeaways.
The Cards missed Dana Evans and it showed
This is the one takeaway I didn’t want to have from this game, and I prayed it wasn’t going to happen.
You could tell from the first few possessions that Louisville was frantic from the opening tip. The Cards tried to force the offense instead of letting it flow naturally.
Hailey Van Lith tried to be that anchor, but you could tell it was wearing on her throughout the game. As the Cards’ offense looked discombobulated throughout much of the first half, they didn’t have that player that could calm everyone down.
Last season they had Dana as that on floor coach and leader, and it seemed as though that is what the team was missing Friday night.
Jeff Walz played too small to beat Arizona
With the additions of transfer Emily Engslter, and the freshmen Payton Verhulst and Sydni Shetnan, the Cards finally had a lot of size to contend with the powers in college basketball.
For some reason though, Coach Walz didn’t use his size to his advantage in this game where everyone knew Arizona would. At one stretch Louisville had 5’7 Mykasa Robinson, 5’7 Haily Van Lith, and 5’7 Chelsie Hall on the court at the same time. Walz also had 6’1 Kianna Smith, and 6’1 Emily Engstler out with them. During this stretch, Arizona had one player under 6 feet tall on the court.
Arizona used its size advantage with 6’2 senior Cate Reese’s able to easily shoot over them from three-point range. None of the Louisville bigs were really in foul trouble so the game plan was kind of weird to see unfold.
Louisville could not find any offensive consistency
The Louisville women’s basketball team came into this game with high hopes on the offensive side of the floor. With what the Cards were returning and adding to that Emily Engslter, Chelsie Hall, and Payton Verhulst it seemed as though Louisville was destined to score in bunches.
This was not the case Friday night. Emily Engstler and Chelsie Hall disappointed in their Louisville women’s basketball debuts. Engstler was 1-for-7 from the floor, and Chelsie Hall was 2-for-9 from the floor
Sophomore star Hailey Van Lith was a dismal 4-of-14 from the floor and 0-for-4 from three-point range. As a team, Louisville only shot 28% from the floor, and 18% from three-point range. These stats are not going to get it done against a fundamentally sound team like Arizona.
The Cards will be back home in action on back-to-back nights. The first will be Tuesday at 7 pm versus Bellarmine on ACCNX. The second will be Wednesday against UT Martin also at 7 pm, and also on ACCNX. Let’s hope the Cards can get it back on track and I don’t have to write one of these articles again for a while.
