Louisville Defeats Nebraska 85-68 in ACC/Big 10 Challenge

The final score might lead people to believe that the Louisville victory over Nebraska was a cakewalk. It was not. Perhaps Louisville was distracted by the Final Four banner that was unveiled before tipoff but they started the game repeatedly getting killed on backdoor cuts. Eventually the defense settled down and adjusted. Still, Nebraska was a tenacious opponent and it wasn’t until the final quarter that Louisville finally wore them down and took a commanding lead.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before but Asia Durr led all scorers. However, her career-high 8 assists may have been as integral to Louisville’s success as her 25 points. As other teams key in on her to stop Louisville she is finding other ways to contribute. Sam Fuehring had a double-double (14 points/10 rebounds).

Dana Jones hit a shot at the buzzer to end the half. Coach Walz said, “Our execution at the end of quarters has been really good.... You’ve got to be able to execute at the end of quarters and the end of shot clocks because it really pressures people so I was really proud of her.”

After the game Coach Walz also urged his team to focus on their strengths. “I keep telling them, ‘Guys do what you’re good at. And then what you’re not good at work on in practice’.” He stressed that he had no problem with them missing shots that are already in their wheelhouse but it was frustrating to see them trying new things during a game.

However, he did stress that scoring is one of this team’s strengths. “Defensively I think we’re going to get better. I’m not as worried as some people might be. The one thing I can tell you is—if you can’t score the basketball it’s really hard to turn your team into a team that can score. But you can definitely make a team a better defensive team. So I like the fact that we’re putting points up and we’ll start to clean some things up [defensively].”

Next up Louisville plays Tennessee State at the Yum Center on Sunday at 2pm.