The No. 7 Cardinals overwhelmed Bellarmine in a record-setting season opener, but their discipline, depth and size offered more encouragement than the final score.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB+WAVE) — Louisville scored 119 points Monday night, the most in the history of its women’s basketball program. It scored 72 in the first half, another school record. It scored 44 in the first quarter, yet another record.
Jeff Walz might have been happiest with the number six.
That’s how many times his team turned the ball over.
There are a lot of ways to win a basketball game by 72 points. There aren’t nearly as many ways to keep playing good basketball when the game has been decided almost before the other team gets a shot off.
Louisville did both in a 119-47 demolition of Bellarmine at the KFC Yum! Center.
The Knights went more than five minutes before attempting their first shot. By then, they were already in considerable trouble.
The Cardinals were bigger, faster, deeper and more talented. None of that was particularly surprising. What was more encouraging was how they handled it.
They kept passing. They kept defending. They kept running their offense. Players came off the bench without treating the game as an invitation to audition for a highlight reel.
By the end, six Louisville players had scored in double figures, and the Cardinals had committed fewer turnovers all night than Bellarmine averaged per quarter.
In a game that offered almost no competitive resistance, Louisville offered very little evidence of competitive indifference.
“Normally you get into a situation like this, you try to overpass, you get sloppy with the basketball, and before you know it, you’re up to 13 or 14 turnovers,” Walz said. “That’s one of the things we continue to talk about because we shoot it so well. If we can limit our turnovers, we’re going to have a chance to be in a lot of really, really good games.”
It was only Bellarmine, and that qualification belongs in any discussion of the evening. But plenty of teams have spent second halves like this one collecting statistics and waiting for the clock to expire. Louisville didn’t.
Monique Reid has seen some pretty good Louisville teams. She played for two that reached the national championship game, in 2009 and 2013. She knows what Walz’s best teams have looked like, what they could do and what they sometimes had to do without.
Monday night, as Bellarmine’s second-year coach, she got a look at something different.
“I’ve never seen a Louisville team like this,” Reid said.
The difference, she explained, was size. Real size. Louisville has spent much of Walz’s tenure succeeding with athletic players who could defend multiple positions but weren’t necessarily traditional post players. Reid herself sometimes had to play inside.
“We always had athletic tweeners,” she said. “They have the bigs. They have the size.”
Then she went further.
“This is the deepest team I’ve ever seen from him.”
Louisville has had extraordinary players in Walz’s 20 seasons. Angel McCoughtry could take over a game almost by herself. Shoni Schimmel could shoot a team into submission. Asia Durr could make defenses look helpless.
But Reid sees something different about the construction of this roster. Louisville has the perimeter talent and athleticism associated with Walz’s best teams, along with a collection of bigger players who can score, defend and give him options he hasn’t always had.
And perhaps the most important addition is the player who makes all those other pieces work.
Zamarya Jones arrived from NC State and immediately looked like the most disruptive point guard Louisville has had since Dana Evans. That was Walz’s comparison, too. He reached back to Evans when describing Jones’ willingness to pick up opponents full court.
Jones matched her career highs in her first game as a Cardinal with nine assists and six steals, and made life miserable for Bellarmine’s ballhandlers. Walz estimated that she had 13 or 14 deflections, the kind of defensive activity that doesn’t always show up in a box score but can dictate the way a game is played.
Jones doesn’t wait for the offense to come to her. She goes looking for it, often 94 feet from the basket. Against Bellarmine, the Knights sometimes seemed to be playing against the clock, the defense and the geography of the basketball court all at once.
But Jones isn’t just a defensive nuisance. She runs the offense with purpose, pushes the pace and gets the ball to the right people. Louisville has plenty of players who can score. Having someone who knows when and where to deliver the ball makes all of them more dangerous.
And when Jones needs a break, Louisville has another point guard who appears capable of keeping things moving.
Freshman Ariyana “Peanut” Cradle showed the confidence and pace that Walz has been seeing in practice. She pushed the ball, attacked the offensive glass and didn’t look overwhelmed by her first college game.
Walz liked what he saw, though he also remembered a possession when Cradle made a three-pointer and failed to sprint back on defense. A made basket doesn’t excuse the next mistake.
Carys Baker, the Virginia Tech transfer, showed off a quick shooting release that makes her particularly difficult to defend at her size. Amiya Joyner, the LSU transfer, displayed a soft touch around the basket and the ability to score with her back to the goal.
Louisville has had great scorers before. It has had outstanding guards and athletic forwards. What it hasn’t always had is this combination of perimeter skill, traditional post play and enough depth to keep the pressure on when the starters sit down.
Monday, the bench contributed 65 points.
Reid was impressed enough to tell Walz after the game that she hoped he would win a national championship.
“It makes me smile seeing it because I’m still prideful about my school,” Reid said. “Of course I don’t want them to whoop us like that. But I really wish Jeff all the best. ... Some of the things wowed me that I saw tonight.”
It was an unusual endorsement from a coach who had just lost by 72 points. But Reid wasn’t speaking only as Bellarmine’s coach. She was speaking as someone who knows the program and still considers herself part of it.
She remembers what it took to play for Walz. She recalled injuring her knee during a game and having her coach come over, seemingly concerned. His advice, as she remembered it, was that she only needed one knee to play. She laughed telling the story Monday. She’s trying to teach that same toughness at Bellarmine now.
Walz, meanwhile, was considerably less interested in being wowed.
He has some concerns with the rebounding. Louisville had a considerable size advantage but outrebounded Bellarmine by only six. He thought his players failed to put bodies on opponents and too often tried to collect rebounds by running underneath the basket.
He called his team’s 15-for-26 free-throw shooting “pitiful.”
And after Louisville made 10 of its first 15 three-point attempts, it made only two of its final 17.There will be plenty to discuss when the Cardinals watch the film.
But Walz was pleased with the way they shared the ball, and especially with the defensive intensity that started with Jones. He still talks about taking charges, diving for loose balls and doing the things that don’t show up in scoring totals.
He also made clear that minutes will be earned, not distributed equally. The depth gives him options. It also gives him the ability to demand more from players who aren’t meeting expectations.
Of course, depth isn’t merely a luxury. Sometimes it’s a necessity.
Louisville lost Elif Istanbulluoglu to an ankle injury and Mackenly Randolph after a blow to the head. Walz said both could miss Wednesday’s game, and he didn’t expect Istanbulluoglu to be available.
That means some of the players who were getting their first extended opportunities Monday could have more responsibility almost immediately.
And there’s a long way to go before Louisville knows whether Reid’s championship hopes have much substance. Bellarmine couldn’t provide the kind of resistance that will tell Walz how his team responds when shots aren’t falling, when opponents can handle its pressure or when the Cardinals find themselves trailing in the fourth quarter.
Those tests are coming.
Monday, his team scored more points than any Louisville women’s team ever had. The record book will preserve the 119. The 44-point first quarter and 72-point half will be there, too.
But there was something else worth remembering about the Cardinals’ first night.
They were ahead by so much that almost anything would have worked. They kept doing what they were supposed to do anyway.