This game was hyped on social media all week. The battle of the two unbeaten ACC teams. The Yum Center was packed. Unfortunately in the first quarter it appeared only the Duke players got the memo that this was a huge game. The Blue Devils came out and smacked the Cards in the mouth and […]
This game was hyped on social media all week. The battle of the two unbeaten ACC teams. The Yum Center was packed. Unfortunately in the first quarter it appeared only the Duke players got the memo that this was a huge game. The Blue Devils came out and smacked the Cards in the mouth and by the time Louisville decided to join the game they found themselves in a deep hole.
Still the Cards didn’t quit and held Duke to way below their average in scoring. Louisville even took the lead early in the 4th quarter but then they went scoreless for the next four minutes. Imari Berry got a steal and fouled on a shot in the final seconds and could’ve sent the game into overtime but was unable to convert both free throws which was one of the themes of the night.
Elif Istanbullouglu led the Cards in scoring with 13. Laura Ziegler had 11 points and 8 rebounds. Reyna Scott had 11 points and 5 rebounds.
Coach Walz said, “We gave up some crucial offensive rebounds. They get 10 offensive boards and their point guard gets 5 of them. That’s a problem. Our guards have to be willing to box out as well and unfortunately we did not do a very good job of that
Laura Ziegler said, “They were physical and we shied away from it a little bit instead of going into them and drawing fouls.” She added, “We need to go back to some of the stuff that got us to where we are. We play really, really well when we play with each other and for each other… but when we start playing too much one-on-one and don’t pass the ball around we’re a lot easier to guard.”
Elif said, “We did a good job fighting back but we should’ve set the tone earlier and we kind of started soft. In these games you can’t do that. You can’t have a 3 minute stretch where you’re not ready for the tempo.”
Duke finished the game with 9 blocked shots but it felt like 90. Coach Walz said, “I kept telling them that they’re helping out, when you skip it shot fake and drive because they’re trying to block shots but we just kept thinking that we’d get the shot over them. They blocked 9 of them and I think if we’d gone to overtime they probably would’ve added 3 or 4 more because we were just gonna prove to them that you can’t block it. After 9 you would think you would be like well shit… maybe I’ll change. But we kept doing the same thing.”
Next up the Cards travel to Syracuse. The game is on Sunday the 8th at noon and can be seen on The CW.
Category: General Sports
