By Benjamin Lampkin
Bearcats end lady cards c-usa title hopes
By Benjamin Lampkin
Assistant Sports Editor
Chicago- The weekend started with a win and ended with a bitter loss to an old rival. The University of Louisville women’s basketball team defeated Southern Miss in the opening round of the Conference USA Tournament 83-52 on Friday, and rode that momentum to a nine-point halftime lead the following afternoon against Cincinnati in the quarterfinals. But a pair of deadly underclassman- freshman center Debbie Merrill and sophomore guard Valerie King- combined to score 35 points in the second half to take out the Cardinals 80-70, ending the Cards’ bid for their first C-USA tournament title.
Friday’s opening round matchup with Southern Miss presented little in the way of drama. The Cards built an 11-point first half lead, and went into the locker rooms with a 42-21 lead.
”We were down 24-19 and we missed four straight free throws,” Southern Miss coach Rick Reeves said. ”Next thing, we’re down 30-19, and we never recovered.”
The Cards started the second half with a 17-2 run that saw nearly every player on the floor make an uncontested lay-up. With the full-court press in place, the Cardinals forced 22 turnovers on the afternoon, and pressured the Golden Eagles into a 19-49 (38.8%) shooting effort.
Kara Kessans led all scorers with 17 points on 8-10 shooting, while Sara Nord had 16 points and seven assists. Nord’s 225 assists on the season broke the mark she set last season, which was also a C-USA record.
”The biggest worry today was how we were going to come out,” U of L coach Martin Clapp said. ”We’ve been playing good second halves, but we’ve been getting off to bad starts.”
That wasn’t the case on Saturday, when the Cardinals out-defended, out-scored, and out-played No. 23 Cincinnati during the first half of their quarterfinal matchup. Shooting a scorching 56.7% in the opening 20 minutes, the Cards were up by as many as 15 points before the Bearcats ended the half with a 10-4 run. With an unexpected 45-36 halftime lead, the Cardinals looked to finish with a strong second half.
“He (Clapp) told us to keep our intensity up and don’t let down,” said Sara Nord. “Yesterday we didn’t let down, but it looks like today we let down.”
The letdown started immediately in the second half. Debbie Merrill, the C-USA Freshman of the Year, dominated the final 20 minutes of the game inside, while Valerie King, who was named to the All-Conference First Team, controlled the perimeter.
King nailed her first three shots of the second half and connected on two of three shots from outside the arc. Inside the paint, Merrill was unstoppable. She went 5-6 from the floor and 9-10 from the charity stripe over the last half.
Meanwhile, the Cards’ offense had fallen apart. Cincinnati switched to a 1-3-1 defense after playing woman-to-woman to start the game, and ran a box set at half court to trap the U of L ballhandler bringing it up. The Cards were never able to get into a rhythm offensively, a tribute to both the Bearcats’ defense and a lack of court vision.
“We weren’t looking for the open people,” said senior Kara Kessans. “They had good defense, but we just weren’t penetrating and dishing it off, and I guess we kinda had a problem with it.”
The problems got worse as the Cards’ comfortable lead soon turned into a formidable deficit. Trailing 61-59 with 8:00 on the clock, the Cardinals remained within seven until the final minute. Things got interesting when the Cards forced a turnover and trailed by only five with just 36 seconds remaining.
But seconds later, Kim Graham let the ball slip out of her fingers near the U of L bench, and the Bearcats hit their final five free throws to hold on to an 80-70 victory.
“The little things we did the other night and in the first half, we didn’t do in the second half,” said Clapp. “Just bad decisions, player and coach wise.”
Seniors Kara Kessans and Marju Sober each finished with 16 points, but they hit only a combined 2 of 14 shots in the second half. Whether this is their final game or not, Kessans feels they were starting to play their best basketball of the season.
“We had an up and down season, at the end I think we started to come together,” said Kessans. “Overall, I think we kept getting better each game, everybody started stepping up, and at the end of the season I think we started getting better as a team.”
The Cardinals now sit at 17-12, and are forced to await a decision from the NCAA selection committee on whether or not they get into the NCAA Tournament. With Tulane reaching the tournament finals after beating No. 1 seed TCU, Conference USA may get as many as four teams into the postseason.
Cincinnati is currently ranked in the Top 25 and faces Tulane in the championship game. Houston, who lost to Cincinnati 78-74 in the semifinals, has the same 8-6 conference record as the Cards, but has C-USA Player of the Year Chandi Jones to impress the selection committee.
Sara Nord was named to the 2002 Conference USA First Team. Nord led the conference in assists with 8.1 per game and broke her own record with 229 assists in a season. Marju Sober was named to the Third Team after leading the Cardinals in scoring for the second straight season.
