Louisville must’ve watched the tape from the Duke game Thursday night and thought “oh hey coming out high energy and smothering the other team is a great way to start the game let’s try that!” The Cards literally held Syracuse scoreless from the field for the entire first quarter and went into the 2nd up 28-6. However Syracuse won the 2nd quarter 30-16 so Louisville had a halftime lead of 44-36.
Laura Ziegler said, “The last loss was really tough on us and we talked about how we came out in the first quarter. I think we did a great job today just playing hard. I think that was the main thing we tried to come back to is playing hard and being the tougher team. We went away from it a little bit, but we found our way back.”
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In the third quarter Syracuse cut the lead to 5 a couple of times but in the 4th the Cards dominated outscoring the Orange 17-9.
Laura Ziegler led the Cards in scoring with 22. Mackenly Randolph had 15 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists. Tajianna Roberts bounced back from the last game to score 12 points, grab 5 rebounds, and dish out 5 assists. Louisville had 20 assists to Syracuse’s 5 and out-rebounded them 39-27. Syracuse only had 7 second chance points for the game.
Coach Walz said, “In the second quarter we felt good about ourselves and then we started trying to do one-on-one hero ball and that’s not what we’re good at. That’s not our team. We can’t do that. I’ve tried to tell them you’ve got to make the extra pass. When we pass the basketball — cut, pass, screen, set each other up — we are really good. But when we stop and stare and go one-on-one we’re not good.”
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He was more pleased with his team’s play later in the game, “I thought the end of the third quarter we finally started executing, moving the basketball, and being unselfish. And then the fourth quarter was pretty darn good.”
He praised Elif Istanbulluoglu’s game, “E, she ended up with 4 points tonight and 6 rebounds but man she’s down there battling. She’s battling. She’s always guarding the other team’s best post player.”
Louisville comes back to the Yum to take on Wake Forest this Thursday. The game is at 7PM and can be seen on ACC Network Extra.
