Dana Evans Leads Louisville Women’s Basketball To Win On Senior Day.
The Louisville women’s basketball program took the court at the KFC Yum! Center for the last time in the 2020-21 season. Before the game, the team and fans shared an emotional home goodbye for senior leader Dana Evans. After the ceremony for the lone senior on the team, it was time to get to business. The Cards and Yellow Jackets traded baskets through a toughly contested first half.
In the end, Louisville took their biggest lead of the half to the locker room with a 36-28 lead. The Cards came out of the locker room on an 8-2 run to push the led up to double digits. Louisville was able to keep the lead in double digits through the majority of the second half.
When the final buzzer sounded Louisville took the 85-70 victory on senior night.
Here are my three takeaways from the Thursday night game.
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Dana Evans Went Out In Style
In her last game in the Yum, Dana went out as only Dana can. The senior came ready to play on her night scoring 13 of the Louisville women’s basketball program’s 36 first-half points. Evans almost matched her first-half point total by putting up 12 in the second half to finish with 25 points to lead all scorers. It was a decent shooting night for her from the field at 8-19, but I’m sure she wishes she could have gotten more threes to go down only hitting 1 of 4.
The always reliable Evans played 39 minutes in her last home game. She also led all players with 7 assists and added 4 rebounds to her stat line. Evans will always be a fan favorite, and I am sure everyone in the fan base was hoping she would go off.
Kianna Smith Is The For Sure Number Two On The Team
Evans is the clear cut number one on the team. Behind her has been a battle all season long between Kianna Smith, Hailey Van Lith, and Olivia Cochran. Smith has jumped ahead of both HVL and Cochran to become the second leading scorer on the team. She is averaging 12.3 on the season, and 14.4 in her last 5 games.
Smith leads the team in three-point percentage at 41% and is third on the team in FG percentage at 47%. Against Georgia Tech Smith played 38 minutes scoring 21 points on 9-13 shooting from the field and 3-6 from three-point range. To round out her stat line, Smith added 3 rebounds and 5 assists. Smith’s shooting this well as of late is going to take a lot of pressure off of Evans moving forward.
The Bigs Came Up Big
Both Olivia Cochran and Elizabeth Dixon played extremely well against the Yellow Jackets. Dixon got the start and played 26 minutes, scoring 13 points on 4-9 shooting from the field. She led all players in rebounds with 9 and added 1 assist.
Cochran played 22 minutes coming off the bench. The freshman scored 13 points also on 6-11 shooting and also grabbed 6 rebounds. Dixon and Cochran were tied to be the third leading scorers for Louisville in the game, but I think there is a more important stat line I haven’t talked about as of yet. The duo only committed 2 fouls each. If Louisville can keep their inside presence from getting into foul trouble and staying on the floor this is going to be huge down the stretch.
It was a great night for the Cards and the fans. As the final buzzer sounded and the fans were treated to a goodbye speech and lap from Dana its another home season in the books. Louisville played well all the way around tonight against a tough Georgia Tech team, and actually extended the lead in the fourth quarter for the first time in a long time. Now the Cards head out on the road for the last four games of the season.
As this post was edited before being published we here at State of Louisville will update the schedule. With the Syracuse game being postponed, the next game will be at Pittsburgh. The Cards will play the Panthers on February 18th at 7 p.m. The game can be seen on ACCNX and can be listened to on 790 WKRD in Louisville.
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