LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- You lose back-to-back games for the first time in three years, and what a couple of weeks ago seemed like your typical top-10 matchup becomes an existential crisis. Unless you’re Jeff Walz.
While he wasn’t any too thrilled that his team dropped road games at Florida State and Syracuse while playing without talented transfer Elizabeth Balogun, Walz also didn’t panic. He had his team’s attention this week in practice, and on Thursday night in Raleigh, North Carolina, made the most of it.
The No. 9 Cardinals played their best game of the season, getting a brilliant performance on both ends from senior center Kylee Shook and some big baskets late from Jazmine Jones to knock of No. 4 N.C. State, 66-59, in front of a sellout crowd in Reynolds Coliseum.
Shook had 10 points and 10 rebounds, but it was on defense where she set the tone for the game, holding N.C. State’s ACC player of the year candidate Elissa Cunane to 0-10 shooting in the paint while blocking seven shots.
“She’s an amazing player and the key to their team,” Shook told the ACC Network after the game. “We knew we had to limit her to have a chance to win. This whole game plan was not getting beat outside, and our guards did a good job of slowing their penetration ... We had to get this. They took No. 1. We had a chip on our shoulder coming in here. We felt like we had something to prove.”
The Cardinals grabbed the lead from the opening tip and led by as many as 14 in the second quarter before going to the half up 10.
They ran N.C. State off the three-point line effectively and allowed just 5-20 three-point shooting by the Wolfpack in the game.
N.C. State made a second half run and closed its gap to three in the closing minutes, but Louisville remained calm. Jones hit a big three and scored on a drive to the basket, and Shook kept causing problems for N.C. State inside.
Speaking with Nick Curran on Walz’s postgame radio show, associate coach Sam Purcell said he thinks the two losses forced this team to grow.
“Here’s why I think we had success,” Purcell told Curran. “Jeff Walz has poise. You have to understand what we’ve been through. We don’t lose two in a row. Everybody, our fans, were like, what’s going on? I love what our head coach did (in allowing Balogun to leave for two games to help Nigeria qualify for the Olympics) ... He said, ‘We’re good. We still had enough to win those two games. We just didn’t make shots.’ I think this win started with those two losses. The worst thing you can do is defeat yourself. But we stayed together, and that’s championship pedigree, and our players locked in on the scouting report and came into a sold-out arena and got the job done.”
N.C. State coach Wes Moore said his team took bad shots early and couldn’t dig out of its first-half hole.
“We weren’t ready to play,” he said. “We came out and took some uncharacteristically bad shots. We forced some things, dug a big hole and weren’t able to get out to it. Give credit to Louisville. They did a great job defensively, and we didn’t. Very disappointing. . . . Give them credit. They came out here, toughed it out and were ready to attack us. We fell down 19-8, and seemed down all night long. … We’ve got to learn to play on this stage better.”
Louisville got 19 points and eight rebounds from Jones and 14 points from Dana Evans. Balogun had nine points and eight rebounds, and Yacine Diop added eight points off the bench.
The Cardinals moved back into a first-place tie in the ACC with the win, and will return home Sunday for a 3 p.m. game against Notre Dame in the KFC Yum! Center.
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