By Glypie Grider
It was U of L’s first NCAA appearance in four years, but the women’s basketball team came home empty-handed Saturday. Louisville, the No. 9 seed in the Kansas City brackets with a 22-8 record and an at-large berth to the tournament, challenged the No. 8 seed, University of Southern California. U of L was down by three at half time, but the deficit expended through the second half and Louisville fell to the Trojans, 65-49.
USC, who hasn’t made an NCAA appearance in eight years, will face top-seeded Michigan State.
“What we needed to do more often was to penetrate the zone and get them to respect that,” U of L coach Tom Collen reported to The Courier-Journal. “We try to find ways to beat zones without shooting threes, but we didn’t attack like we wanted to.”
USC’s Chloe Kerr, who had a game-high 14 points, put any hopes of a Cardinal victory to rest as she sparked an 18-0 Trojan run for a 53-31 margin. The Cardinals didn’t score for nearly eight minutes.
USC, who averaged more than six 3-pointers a game during the regular season, was 3-for-18 from behind the arc against the Cardinals. On the other side of the boards, U of L was 8-for-20, led by Connie Neal’s three 3-pointers.
Sophomore Jazz Covington led the Cardinals with 13 points, mostly lay ups after the game was out of reach. Covington generally averages 17.8 points a game.
Covington and Missy Taylor tied for team-high rebounds at five. Taylor trailed Covington with 11 points, nine of which were in the first half.
“My knee is at about 80 percent right now, so it’s harder to run, jump and cut like I did before,” Taylor reported to The Courier-Journal.
Four Trojans made it into double digits, and Eshaya Murphy had the game-high rebounds with eight.
Louisville was outrebounded 45-32, and the Trojans had 12 steals.
“We have a young team with great aspirations. We just have to take it one step at a time and we’ll be fine,” Collen said.
Louisville now prepares for the transition to the Big East conference, slated to begin next season. Louisville finished second in the Conference USA tournament this year and second overall in the season with an 11-3 record.
