By Pk Bartley
The women’s basketball team has gotten off to a rocky start, going 1-2 in their first three games. The Lady Cards jumped out to big leads against Western Kentucky and Evansville, but ended up losing the game against the Lady Hilltoppers by 20 and narrowly falling to the Purple Aces by 2.
“I think we got relaxed and calm,” says junior guard Sara Nord. “We thought we had the game won in the first 12 minutes; we just didn’t realize there were eight more minutes in the first half and the entire second half left to go. We just weren’t as focused as we were in the first 12 minutes.” According to Nord, after U of L got out to a big lead, the team started to go back to their old bad habits.
Louisville finally open their home slate this Friday, when they will be playing Indiana Purdue- Fort Wayne, then Tennessee-Chattanooga on Sunday.
“I think it’s going to be good to come back home,” says Nord. “When we’re up fifteen, we’ll have our crowd behind us to keep us in the game instead of silence in the gym.”
U of L head coach Martin Clapp believes that the team’s poor play is due in large part to the bad practices they’ve been having so far this season.
“I’ve always said I can coach a lot of X’s and O’s, but you can’t coach effort,” Coach Clapp stated. “We’re not sprinting back on defense and we’re not running hard on offense.”
Clapp believes he was trying to have the team play a style of basketball that didn’t fit the personnel, so he feels that simplifying the offense and defense will improve the team’s performance.
“We’ve been running sets every time down the floor, too much half court basketball, and it’s too easy to defend. We want to get away from having to call sets. We just want be able to make reads off where the pass goes, and that makes it harder to defend.”
If Louisville is to turn things around, Clapp believes that they’re going to have to run more and give more fast break points and go hard on the offensive boards to get second-chance points. Clapp would like to see the scores in the 80s and 90s instead of in the 60s.
Right now U of L is playing without two of their best players, senior center Lori Nero, a transfer from Auburn, and senior guard Sabrina Minter. Both should be able to start playing for the Cards in Louisiana at the LSU tournament.
Against Evansville, Louisville was hurt by the absence of Clapp, who was serving a one-game suspension for recruiting violations committed by one of his former assistant coaches. Clapp and the team both feel that not having him there may have cost the team the game.
“I think with some of us, our focus wasn’t there,” said senior forward Amanda Wolkie. “We can’t put all the blame on coach not being there because we’re the ones out there playing. We should be able to keep our focus and execute and play defense through the whole game, which we didn’t.”
Louisville plays Fort Wayne Friday at 7 PM and Chattanooga Sunday at 2 PM. Both games are at Freedom Hall and are free to students with a valid ID.
