By Elizabeth Scanland
Louisville just snuck by the Wake Forest Demon Deacons to leave Winston-Salem with an overtime victory.
What was expected to be an easy win for the Cards turned into a nail-biting near disaster.
Baby, it’s cold inside
The game opened up as a back-and-forth affair until the Cards went on a scoring drought several minutes. Coupled with seven first quarter turnovers, Wake Forest took advantage of the Louisville mistakes to the tune of a five-point lead.
The Cards had a chance to close the gap to a one-possession game, but twice failed to score.
The Cards trailed 12-17 to end the first.
Louisville finally brought the game within one possession with a three-pointer made by Merissah Russell, then quickly forced a turnover. But the Cards failed to capitalize, allowing the Demon Deacons to come up with easy points for Aurora Sorbye.
That was the start of a nearly four-minute scoring drought for Louisville, only widening their deficit.
Izela Arenas ended the drought with a big three, following it up with another shot from deep to give the Cards just a hint of life.
Louisville later tied the game up at 29-29 thanks to a couple more layups from Arenas. The freshman-wing scored all 10 of her points in the second quarter.
While Louisville was slowly able to climb back up, their turnover still presented too much of an issue. Wake Forest’s defense was in full force, trapping players and creating sloppy plays for Louisville. Wake forced an additional four turnovers in the quarter, bringing the Cardinals’ total to 11 in the first half.
After two made free throws from Oliva Cochran, Tajianna Roberts forced a steal to give the Cards a chance to take the lead at the half, but she came up short on the fastbreak attempt.
Louisville went into the locker room down 31-32.
Spicy to the finish
Nyla Harris opened up the third quarter on one of the only positive notes of the day, grabbing an offensive rebound and hitting a second chance layup to give the Cards to first lead since 4:06 left in the first quarter.
The two teams then went shot-for-shot, with Roberts and Rylie Theuerkauf battling back and forth. They combined for 18 points accounted for as the lead changed six times throughout the quarter.
Theuerkauf claimed victory with threes on back-to-back possessions to give the Deacons a seven-point lead, but Russell quickly responded with one of her own to stop the bleeding.
Harris took over in the final seconds, scoring four points in just 26 seconds.
Louisville ended strong, but was still was behind 54-56.
The fourth quarter was when Louisville finally woke up.
Cochran helped Louisville claim the lead with five points to open the quarter, and the defense held strong by only giving up two points in the first five minutes.
Louisville grew their lead as high as four point multiple times in the final period of play.
Just when it looked like the Cards were going to be able to walk away with the close win, Theuerkauf came up with a logo-three with 13 seconds left to tie the game at 70-70 sending the game into overtime. The play was on an in-bounds set that Wake had scored on multiple times prior.
Overtime was as ugly as the four quarters had been, but Louisville struck first to give them the advantage. Like a rally in a tennis match, the two sides kept matching point for point.
Then, Jayda Curry put on her cape.
She scored one point off of a free throw, then drained a shot from beyond the arc to put the Cards up by five. After an and-1 from Wake, Curry knocked down another triple with just 16.4 second left.
The defense held strong on the final possession, narrowly avoiding chaos.
Louisville won 81-76.
A night off
A lot went wrong for Louisville during this matchup.
Weak defensive efforts and an issue with turnovers made the game closer than it should have been. Louisville did a better job forcing turnovers, but Wake did a better job at scoring off of those turnovers.
Louisville had 15 points off of 28 forced turnovers to Wake’s 26 points on 21 forced turnovers.
Wake also shot in the few clean possessions either team had, hitting 58.7% from the field and 52.6% from three. These numbers are for a team that was awful at shooting going into the game, and a Louisville defense that has had a good season in most matchups.
Louisville, however, show well themselves, making 45% from the field and 47.4% from deep.
Harris had herself a night with 18 points and four rebounds, followed by Roberts with 17 points.
While this game could have gone a lot better for the Cards, they played gritty and at times when they played sloppy or were down, they never seemed discouraged or too down.
Tough wins like this will help prepare the Cards as their slate gets harder and as March slowly approaches.
Louisville advances to 10-5 on the season and 3-1 in the ACC.
Photo Courtesy // Landen Fuller, Louisville Athletics
