LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- This is not the story of a basketball game. The Louisville women’s basketball team, which dropped out of the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2016 earlier this week, responded with a vengeance in a 105-32 win over Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville Tuesday night in the KFC Yum! Center.
Mykasa Robinson, a starting guard, did not play, sidelined by a concussion. Key reserve Norika Konno sat out with an illness. It was the Cards’ second game without sophomore guard Payton Verhulst, who departed via the transfer portal before Sunday’s loss at Middle Tennessee.
But it is important to know, this program, which spent more than 90 straight weeks in the Top 10, is still here. It has been a different kind of season for the Cardinals and coach Jeff Walz. Over the past half-dozen years, people have been accustomed to Louisville winning nearly every game.
Walz, who is plugging new pieces into a team that lost three major contributors from a Final Four run, could have made this easier. He didn’t need to take his team to the Bahamas or on the road to Belmont or Middle Tennessee. He did it to toughen his team up and subject it to top competition.
Sometimes if you do that, you lose. If you’re going to play that kind of schedule, you can’t be afraid to lose.
Still, this is a Louisville team that was good enough to get up on a Top 5 Ohio State team by double digits in the first half and lead by 9 at the break. The talent is there. It’s the first week of December. Some seasons, it takes time.
College basketball isn’t always a win-them-all sport. Sometimes, it’s about the final exam. I know some fans, after Louisville lost a 12-point lead to fall by 9 at N.C. State last year, a stunning 20-point swing in a single quarter, who said, “You can’t wilt like that late. Good team, not a great team.”
That was in January. In April, the Cardinals went to the Final Four.
They don’t play those Final Four games in January. Or December. In college basketball, it’s about the final exam. Everything else is preparation.
After a 5-4 start, the media voted the Cardinals out of the Top 25. Coaches, perhaps in appreciation of some of the tough road tasks that Walz took on, kept them in.
Either way, Walz has kept working, kept tweaking. At Middle Tennessee, they had to find a game jersey for Zyanna Walker. Until the moment Walz called her off the bench, Walker was going to redshirt. She didn’t even bring a game jersey. The freshman who was a 4-star recruit and the Kansas Gatorade Player of the Year, responded well, and saw major minutes again on Tuesday, as did another freshman, Jalyn “Ice” Brown, a 6-foot forward out of Baltimore.
Walz has been looking for shooting. Kianna Smith, a year ago, provided consistent perimeter offense, shooting nearly 40% from 3-point range. So far this season, no one has stepped into that role.
But there has been no panic from Walz. He and his players just have to figure it out. That’s what the season is for. Asked if the team has had a “come to Jesus” moment in the midst of the losses, Walz said, “It’s just a learning process at this point in time. There wasn't a come-to-Jesus moment or anything like that. We're just playing basketball. We're not curing cancer or anything like that. So, to say there's a "come to Jesus" meeting, I'm not sure I'd go to that extreme. We just talked about the things we had to do better. We've got to execute better at the offensive end. We've got to execute better at the defensive end. We've got to value the basketball. We have to understand time and score. You know, all those things.”
On Tuesday night, Walz often told his team not to press fast-break chances because he wanted to see his players execute in the half court. He gave playing time to reserves. He was excited to see 6-3 Utah Valley transfer Josie Williams score with a bit more confidence.
Hailey Van Lith, who led the Cardinals with 21 points and 6 assists, went over the 1,000-point mark for her career. She said that while the recent losses have been frustrating, the team has stayed positive.
“We learned our lessons and, yeah, every game, every loss we’ve taken very seriously,” Van Lith said. “But college basketball is hard. There’s a lot of parity. So like, we’re getting that work in and it's now, I really feel like it's starting to evolve. We’re all mature and grown up and we can admit personal faults and people that aren't bought in and I think that we've cleared the air on that and our team is ready to just compete every game. . . . I think this was a good game for us not just because we won like we did, but I really feel like this was the first game in a while I felt like we applied things that we needed to work on.”
As for her 1,000-point milestone, Van Lith said, “It was really nice. And mostly, I'm just thankful to play for this program. It means more when you do it at Louisville and you do it in a program that has players that have gone and done great things. Yeah, I was really happy just and I just felt gratitude for being here.”
Walz said his team will keep working, learning and improving. They’ll address their problems, and come up with solutions. The coach said he ran into a fan recently who kept asking, “What’s wrong?” Finally, Walz gave him a response.
“You’re spoiled, that’s what’s wrong,” Walz said. “You’re spoiled. You know, for the past for 98 straight weeks. We were in the top 10 which is a little over five seasons. And I told the gentleman very nicely, ‘I'm sure you were probably complaining when we lost one of those games.’ So people are going to complain no matter what I say. I promise you we are trying to win all of them. But every once in a while things don't always go the way we had anticipated. Well, now ,this is one of those years right now. We’re 6-4, and you’d think we were 4-6. And we're just going to continue to work, continue to grind and see if we can't get this thing going the way we thought it would at the beginning of the year.”
Copyright 2022 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
