LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — The Louisville women’s basketball team has done the respectable things. It has grown up. It has gotten older. It has listened better. It has improved.
All of that is true, and all of it matters.
But March Madness does not care much for progress reports.
It wants the rebound. The free throw. The late possession handled cleanly and the lead treated like something to be protected, not merely enjoyed. It does not ask whether a team is better than it was in November or tougher than it was a year ago. It asks the old question, the only one that matters now:
Can you finish?
Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford
That was the question living beneath nearly everything Jeff Walz said Friday as Louisville prepared to open NCAA Tournament play at the KFC Yum! Center on Saturday at noon. His team is staying in a hotel, keeping an ACC Tournament routine, trying to treat a home game like a business trip.
That’s not because Walz thinks his team has been bad at home. It hasn’t. Louisville’s home losses came by one, two, three and four points. The problem is not that the Cardinals have been outclassed in their own building.
The problem is that they haven’t closed.
That truth showed itself again in the ACC Tournament title game against Duke, when Louisville led by four with a minute to play, had the ball, and still let the championship slip away. Walz mentioned the obvious culprits Friday: a missed free throw, a poor decision or two, a missed rebound. But he also pointed to an earlier mistake, a failure to use a foul before Duke’s Ashlon Jackson buried a deep 3-pointer at the end of the first quarter.
His point was clear enough. The final minute always gets the blame, but games are usually lost in installments.
"Every minute counts," Walz said.
Louisville women’s basketball players congratulate Duke after the ACC Tournament championship game.
That may be the best way to understand this Louisville team entering the tournament. The Cardinals have already done the hard work of becoming better. One of Walz’s own players, Imari Berry, put that in unusually plain terms Friday when she talked about this team’s ability to listen and implement instruction.
"I feel like last year we didn’t really do that," Berry said. "But this year I feel like we really demanded that."
Players rarely say that part out loud. Coaches hint at it. Reporters infer it. Teammates usually bury it beneath the usual talk of chemistry and growth.
Berry didn’t.
And Walz, in his own way, backed her up. He called this "a good group of kids." He pointed to the influence of veterans Laura Ziegler and Reyna Scott. He talked about growth in his roster — not just as players but in their approach, their professionalism, their investment in one another. He praised a group that has matured, improved and stayed committed to the program through a season that asked a great deal of them.
That matters, too, especially now.
College basketball has become a place where rosters are rebuilt in public and loyalty is negotiated by phone. Walz was unusually candid Friday about the way the transfer portal and NIL process now intrude even while teams are still playing. He said coaches are already hearing from agents, already being asked what they would pay to keep or lure players, already living in the strange overlap where the NCAA Tournament and free agency share the same calendar.
"It’s the dumbest (expletive) I’ve ever heard," Walz said of the current setup.
But buried in that rant was another sign of what Louisville has built. Walz said several players have already signed to return next season, and another told him Friday she plans to come back. In an era when continuity has become one of the rarest luxuries in college sports, Louisville has some.
That doesn’t help win Sunday, of course. But it does help explain why this team feels steadier than the one Walz brought into March a year ago.
It also helps explain why Walz sounds so certain now about who he trusts.
Friday brought actual roster news when Walz announced that guard Skylar Jones is no longer with the team.
"We’ve just parted ways," he said. "It’s best for both parties."
But Walz did not sound like a coach suddenly scrambling to patch together a rotation. He sounded like a coach whose rotation had already told him what it is.
Mackenly Randolph played all 45 minutes in the ACC title game. Berry has a defined role. Scott has a defined role. Tajianna Roberts has a defined role. Walz made it plain that this time of year, depth is less about how many names you can list than how many players you trust when the game tightens.
"You’re just putting your best ones out there," he said.
That, too, is March. It strips teams down to their essentials. It exposes the habits that hold and the ones that fail. It shows which teams know who they are and which ones are still searching.
Louisville, by now, knows who it is.
This is not a team in search of identity. It defends. It shares the ball. It has veteran help. It has returning players who have gotten better. It has a coach who believes it played well enough offensively in the ACC Tournament and does not sound remotely interested in reinventing anything on the eve of March Madness.
What he wants is simpler than that.
He wants his team to finish the play. Finish the possession. Finish the quarter. Finish the game.
He knows this team does not have one of those old Louisville late-clock saviors he referenced Friday. No Dana Evans, no Asia Durr or Shoni Schimmel, no player to whom you can toss the ball and simply hope genius shows up on time. These Cardinals have to do it collectively. They have to execute. They have to get a shot up. They have to be organized enough at the end of games to give themselves a chance to rebound if the first look misses.
That is the burden, but also the opportunity.
Louisville does not enter this tournament trying to prove it has improved. It already has.
The Cardinals are better than they were a year ago. They are more mature. More coachable. More stable. More certain of themselves.
The question now isn’t whether they’re better.
It’s whether they can finish.
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