Louisville women fall to Arizona in OT, 61-59

Maybe because they were wearing bright yellow uniforms but Louisville did not look like themselves for the first half of their game against #22 Arizona. The score was a paltry 9-8 at the end of the first quarter with the Cards shooting 18%. It also didn’t help that they were turnover prone committing 11 in the first half and 17 for the game.

The good news for Hailey Van Lith was that she sparked a run that gave the Cards their first lead of the half by scoring 8 points in the 4th quarter. The bad news is that she scored her first field goal with less than a minute to go in the 3rd. Perhaps more disappointingly she had zero assists for the game. She finished with 19 points. Chelsie Hall had 12 points. Emily Engstler led the team in rebounds with 8.

After the game Coach Walz said, “I thought we competed. We defended extremely well. Offensively we were stagnant at times and couldn’t get things to fall. And we turned the ball over too much… those are the things we need to work on.” He added, “It could’ve gone either way. We didn’t shoot the three well even though we had some good looks and unfortunately just could not capitalize on them.”

Coach said, “It’s the first game of the year. Now we’ll get back and be able to watch some film.” He also talked about scheduling a top team so early in the year and said, “We’ve always tried to have a pretty good schedule. It’s something that we pride ourselves on.” He added, “It was our first game of the year. It was a great ball game. I told the kids in the locker room I’m looking forward to going back and watching it.”

Next up the Cards return home for a battle of Louisville supremacy against Bellarmine. The game is at 7PM and can be seen online on ACCNX.