LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — In a sport now ruled by open wallets and revolving doors, Louisville has committed a small act of rebellion.
It has developed people.
This is not the easiest way anymore. Maybe it never was. But it is harder now, in this age of hurried goodbyes and quicker replacements, when coaches are asked to build teams the way storm victims rebuild porches: fast, practical, whatever holds.
A player leaves. Another arrives. A scorer goes. A scorer is found. A season ends. A roster is scattered to the wind, and everybody starts over as if starting over were the point.
Louisville women's basketball did not do it that way.
Jeff Walz used the portal, because a coach would have to be foolish not to. Good teams in this time know how to welcome newcomers. But Louisville did not build this Sweet 16 run entirely on the temporary. It did not arrive here pushing a shopping cart.
It arrived here with Tajianna Roberts, Imari Berry and Mackenly Randolph, all of them now sophomores, all of them having come to Louisville as freshmen and stayed long enough to become something more than prospects. It arrived here with Elif Istanbulluoglu, who came from Istanbul two years ago and, over time, turned promise into trust.
And when Louisville survived Alabama, 69-68, on Monday at the KFC Yum! Center, it was that group — that homegrown core — that carried the day.
Roberts scored 18 points. So did Istanbulluoglu. Randolph had 9 points and 13 rebounds, seven of them on the offensive glass. Berry had a hard afternoon, then made the two free throws that saved the season.
Walz cannot spend the way some programs spend. He cannot enter every room with the fattest envelope or the brightest promise. So he has had to make his own kind of wealth. Time. Patience. Repetition. Trust. The old currencies. The ones this sport sometimes treats like antiques until March comes around and everybody starts looking for them again.
You saw it in Roberts.
She had a difficult ACC Tournament. She had not played her best basketball late in the season. And then Monday came, and she looked like herself again. Maybe even a little more than herself. She hit four threes and finished with 18 points, yes. But the telling thing was what she talked about afterward. Not scoring. Defense. Stops. The need for them. Louisville's offense, she said, was not the issue. So late in the game she got a hand in a passing lane, and the play mattered because she understood what the moment needed. That is one way players grow up. They stop chasing only what they do best and start seeing what the game asks of them.
You saw it in Randolph, too, maybe clearest of all.
Some players spend years trying to become stars. Some spend years becoming indispensable. Randolph looks like the second kind. Her line Monday — 9 points, 13 rebounds, seven offensive boards — was the work of a player understanding exactly who she is and how she can wreck a game without needing it run through her.
Walz, who has watched a lot of basketball and a lot of young players trying to understand themselves, did not seem especially surprised. "Mac, seven offensive boards again," he said. "Just absolutely an unbelievable effort." That is what coaches say when a player has started to become the answer to a question they have been asking for a while.
She is becoming one of those interior players who changes the feel of a game. Not always glamorous. Not always loud. But always there, arriving where the ball is about to be, arriving where winning usually begins. Her two free throws with 1:57 left pushed the lead to four in a game that never let anybody feel safe.
Then there was Berry, whose day made less sense on paper than it did in life.
She has been consistently good all season. Good enough to be the ACC's Sixth Player of the Year. Good enough that Louisville has learned to trust the sound of her footsteps in important moments. But Monday was rough. One field goal. Six turnovers. Long stretches where the game seemed to slip through her hands.
And then, late, with the season trembling and the room still believing, there she was at the foul line again.
Walz said afterward that in 32 years of coaching, he has never seen a player get to the free-throw line in more huge moments than Berry. Against North Carolina. Against N.C. State. Against Duke. Now Alabama. "The kid stepped up and made both," he said.
That is what development looks like, too, though it does not always look pretty. It is not a straight line. It is not a clean box score. Sometimes it is a player learning how to endure her own bad day long enough to own the last good moment.
Her teammates know this about her. Laura Ziegler said everybody in the huddle still believed the next shot would be Berry's shot, because that is what Berry does. Istanbulluoglu talked about her next-play mentality, the willingness to miss and turn it over and still be ready for the next steal, the next foul shot, the next chance to matter. Those are not things coaches can buy as easily as they buy length or speed or shooting. Those things take time. Those things take living through games together.
And then there is Istanbulluoglu, who may be the quietest proof of the whole idea.
She came from Turkey with size and skill and possibility. On Monday she looked like certainty. Eighteen points. Eleven rebounds. A huge 50-50 ball late, Roberts said, after her deflection. Afterward Istanbulluoglu said something coaches love because it cannot be faked: "We were mentally ready." She had lived through the earlier endings. First round. Second round. She had learned her lesson, she said. It was not going to happen again.
There is a whole program in that sentence.
Because this is not only a story about talent, though Louisville has talent. It is a story about time, which may be the scarcest thing in college basketball now.
Time spent helping Roberts become more than a scorer.
Time spent trusting Berry through mistakes.
Time spent letting Randolph grow into a force.
Time spent helping Istanbulluoglu turn flashes into reliability.
In this sport now, everybody is in a hurry. Players are in a hurry to find a bigger stage, a better fit, a better deal. Coaches are in a hurry to fix the last loss with the next addition. Programs are in a hurry to prove they can still keep up with the richest rooms in the building.
And sometimes, in the rush, what gets lost is the old truth that players do not only arrive. They become.
Louisville is in the Sweet 16 because some of its players became.
That does not make this a fairy tale. The portal matters. Money matters. Ziegler's importance to this team says so plainly enough. Walz praised the leadership and experience she brought. Reyna Scott hit a key late runner. Louisville did what smart teams do now. It adapted. But it also remembered something worth remembering.
There is still value in staying with people long enough to see what they might be.
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