LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — The University of Louisville women’s basketball team accomplished several encouraging goals this season while earning its annual opportunity to make the NCAA Tournament.
The fun, of course, begins Friday at 1:30 p.m. EDT when the No. 6 seed Cardinals take on No. 11 seed Middle Tennessee State at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
In 18 Atlantic Coast Conference games, half of them against teams that also competed in NCAA competition, Louisville ranked first in offensive field goal percentage, second in three-point field goal percentage, fourth in three-point defense and third in rebounding margin. Good work, all that.
Here’s the flashing light that coach Jeff Walz couldn’t turn off:
Turnovers.
Louisville won despite a lingering issue of giving away free basketballs, no questions asked.
With 15.3 turnovers per game, the Cards rank ninth in the ACC and 165th nationally.
Middle Tennessee State ranked first in Conference USA and seventh in the nation in turnovers, committing 11.6 per game.
I’ll let Cards coach Jeff Walz take over.
“I mean, they’re 29-4 for a reason,” Walz said.
“They won on a neutral court against a good Tennessee team. You have to play your best. And we know that.”
“So we have to defend. We can’t give them easy baskets and then we can’t lose the ball 20 times. If we do that, we’re not going to win.
“I talked to our kids about it. I tried to explain it to them. We worked on it in training. We have to value the pass.
“You can’t do float passes. You can’t just dribble them. You have to stop in a jump.
“We’ve had players here in the past, Shoni (Schimmel), (Asia) Durr, Dana (Evans) who could pass on the fly or behind the back. We’re not there right now.
“So I tried to say it’s not negative. But if we’re not doing it right, let’s stop doing it. So for us, we have to keep it simple.
“If we could just get a jump shot, a fake pass. We’re shooting 45, 46 percent from the field as a team. Our field goal percentage is fantastic. But the problem is we’ve been turning over too many balls over the last month.
“I show them the result on video, over and over again. Now it’s a question of whether we’re going to take what we’ve been working on and transfer it into a game.”
Are they?
“We’ve had five straight games where we’ve lost the ball on an open pass,” Walz said. “That’s inattention. That’s a lack of focus.”
Will turnovers be the problem that knocks Louisville out of the tournament?
Who knows?
Here’s a surprising statistic about the Cardinals. I checked the numbers for the 20 games Louisville has played against ACC opponents — 18 during the regular season and two in the league tournament.
Walz’s team has averaged 16.9 turnovers in the 13 ACC games it has won and just 13.3 in the seven games it has lost.
The Cards have won four times when they committed 20 or more turnovers, including once against Notre Dame.
They also lost four times in games against North Carolina, NC State, Syracuse and Virginia Tech while committing fewer turnovers than their season average.
It’s strange and untenable. Walz knows the math doesn’t add up, especially against more formidable opponents in the tournament.
“I hope we see some progress on Friday because we can get those turnovers down to 12 or 13,” Walz said.
“All of a sudden we’re shooting nine or 10 more shots, shooting 46 percent. I mean, you can expect eight to 10 points a game. And that might not sound like a lot, but it’s a lot.”
And the turnover issue is also something to watch as the Cardinals head into the NCAA Tournament.
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