LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Most nights, you can count on a pretty balanced score sheet from Louisville, with four or five players in double digits. And that balance is a good thing. But once in a while, it’s also good to be reminded that any of those players is capable of more.
On Thursday, it was Kiki Jefferson’s night. She opened the game’s scoring with a 3-pointer from the right wing and stayed in scoring mode all night, finishing with 27 points to go along with seven rebounds and four assists as Louisville sprinted away from Boston College in the second half for an 88-60 victory in the KFC Yum! Center.
The win got Louisville back on the right track after a weekend loss at No. 20 North Carolina. The Cardinals improved to 17-3 overall and 6-1, a half-game out of first in the ACC after Syracuse knocked off Notre Dame in South Bend Thursday night. For Boston College, which usually plays the Cardinals tough – at least for a while – the loss was the 15th straight to Louisville.
“I thought we showed some toughness there the second half,” UofL coach Jeff Walz said. “I wasn't extremely pleased, you know, in the first half. At times offensively we were stagnant. We stood. We watched. On offense, everybody wants to look at the ball instead of looking where their defender is. And Boston College did a good job of sending a lot of attention to the post to make sure somebody was around Olivia (Cochran) and Nyla (Harris) at all times. . . . You can’t just go A to B to C. You’ve got to make a read and play off that. And I thought we did a better job of that in the second half.”
Jefferson, who scored just nine points in the loss to North Carolina, found another gear, and her teammates noticed.
Her 27 points were a high in a Louisville uniform, and five points shy of her career high of 32, attained at James Madison in a win over William and Mary last February.
“And here's the thing with Kiki,” Walz said. “She got 27 points on 14 shots. It's not like she was out there shooting in 27 times. She took 14. Now, what I'll give her credit for is she got to the free-throw line. And that's going after rebounds a couple of over-the- back calls she boxed out and she gets fouled. She attacked off the bounce, makes a hard move and gets a hand-check call. So I give Kiki a ton a ton of credit because I thought she was more aggressive, and not just trying to get things for herself but for her teammates, as well. And she played at a faster speed than what I'd seen her play at the past few games. I thought she was tentative at Carolina, kind of looking around before she made a move. And when you do that, you allow the defense to shift and tonight I thought she attacked. She had two in transition where she got the outlet and just took off. She's got great balance and great footwork around the basket that allows her to finish some of the shots that look extremely tough.”
Louisville's Jeff Walz interacts with an official in the second half of Louisville's 88-60 win over Boston College.
Louisville also got 11 points from Elif Istanbulluoglu and 10 from Cochran. Nyla Harris, hampered with early foul trouble, finished with just seven points and six rebounds in 20 minutes, but was plus-23 during her time on the court, and drew praise from Walz.
Jayda Curra also got into early foul trouble, but wound up with seven points and three assists in 18 minutes.
Louisville is back at home on Sunday to face Pittsburgh in a 2 p.m. tipoff.
“Every game right now in this league is difficult,” Walz said. “You just can’t show up and think you’re going to beat somebody. It’s the deepest this league has been in a long, long time. Top to bottom, everybody has gotten better, and that makes it fun.”
How good can his team get?
“I think we've only scratched the surface of how good we can be, but we've got to play together as a team,” Walz said. “. . . We need each other. We're a team that if we play good team basketball and we actually execute, set good ball screens, use screens, pick-and-roll, different things, we have a team that makes open shots. I think we're hard to guard. So hopefully we'll continue to understand that and continue to get in the gym.”
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