By By Catherine Laroche
A record crowd of 9,034 screaming fans saw the fourth-ranked Huskies of Connecticut sneak past the University of Louisville women’s basketball team on Jan. 31 in Freedom Hall. UConn freshman Renee Montgomery had a career-high 26 points to contribute to their 75-68 win over the Cards.
UConn Sophomore Charde Houston added 18 points to the win, while Senior Barbara Turner added 11 points, giving the Huskies their eighth straight win.
“I was happy with the fact that we came back twice in the second half,” Head Coach Tom Collen said. “We just didn’t quite execute down the stretch.”
While Louisville (13-6, 4-4) was just short of pulling the huge upset, U of L Junior Missy Taylor was nothing but perfect shooting, going 6-of-6 for 17 points. Junior Jazz Covington contributed 15 points and eight rebounds.
With just 1:52 left in the game, Louisville tied the game at 66, but couldn’t take the lead. Montgomery landed a lay-up and then six more free throws within the final minute.
After Huskies’ senior Ann Strother missed a free throw, the Cards had a chance to possibly tie or win the game but Montgomery beat four Cardinals to the ball in the final 15 seconds.
“We couldn’t get a rebound,” Collen said. “How many times do you see [that kind of play], you get a missed free throw, you’ve got a chance. We couldn’t get the rebound. We took some rebounders off the floor … because we had a play that we were going to run at the end. But the ball bounced over the shooter’s head. It wasn’t really that we didn’t box anybody out. The rebound went long, and we didn’t scramble and go get it. We had our chances; we needed to execute a little better at times to come away with the win. But there are a lot of things to be happy with.”
The Cards weren’t down the entire game. Louisville had an early 25-20 lead in the first half, until Connecticut (20-2, 9-0) started dominating on both ends of the court which created a 24-5 run for the Huskies. During that stretch, they held the Cards to just one field goal.
Going into half-time, UConn enjoyed a 44-30 lead.
Then, Louisville slowly battled back to nearly catch the five-time champions. Connecticut Head Coach Geno Auriemma was impressed by the way the Cards battled back and by the crowd at Freedom Hall.
“Both games this weekend, we played the kinds of games I expected,” Auriemma said. “We played in two great environments this weekend (DePaul and Louisville).
This will be a great place to play. Certainly, Louisville deserves a lot of credit for how well they played. We got up 17 with 19:50 left in the game. Some teams would have gone down 17 to down 27. They ran off 12 straight points. That says a lot about them.”
Next home game for the Cards is Feb. 4 against Marquette at 7 p.m. in Freedom Hall.
