What Louisville women's basketball can learn from past Final Four teams
A wave of disappointment went over the Louisville women’s basketball team.
The Cardinals thought they’d built up a solid enough resume to be a No. 2 seed in the 2009 NCAA women’s basketball tournament. Instead, they were a 3-seed. But the disappointment quickly turned into a fearlessness that Louisville used to power the program’s first Final Four run and national championship game appearance during Jeff Walz’s second season as head coach.
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“You have to just put all distractions aside and trust and believe in what Coach Walz and the staff ultimately were trying to get us to accomplish,” said Candyce (Bingham) Wheeler, who was a senior on the Cardinals’ 2008-09 team and is now Butler High School’s girls basketball coach. “… I don’t think we had any fear. I think we all had a common goal and knew that he (Walz) was the one ultimately to get us there if we just bought into the game plan, which can be hard at times. But we did, and we just took it one game at a time as well.”
Since then, Louisville has risen to national prominence and made the Final Four three more times (2013, 2018, 2022). And though the expectations for the program have increased over the years, the constant of playing with an underdog mentality has fueled the Cardinals’ deep postseason runs.
At points during the final stretch of the regular season, No. 11 Louisville has admittedly become comfortable, which has proven costly. But the losses must become lessons for this year’s team to become the fifth squad in program history to make a Final Four appearance.
“He just keeps telling us to buy in. We’re not done,” Cardinals guard Reyna Scott said of Walz. “The ceiling is very high. We just can’t settle for a Final Four or Elite Eight or Sweet 16. We’ve got to (aim) for higher. And that’s really it, just buying in. He knows what it takes, but he could do (only) but so much because he’s a coach. It’s all on us. We’re on the floor. We’ve got to execute.”
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Playing well on the road has been important during each of the Cardinals’ Final Four runs. Only the 2012-13 team had more than two regular-season road losses, with five, but that group found another gear in the tournament. As the No. 5 seed, the Cardinals squad averaged 79.5 points per game — their overall average was 71.7 — en route to the program’s second Final Four appearance. That included upsetting top-seeded Baylor and second-seeded Tennessee.
This year, Louisville has gone undefeated in true road games for the first time in program history. It bodes well for the later rounds of the tournament when it’ll have to play tougher competition, which will likely include a No. 1 seed at some point.
One of the biggest pieces to each Final Four run at Louisville was also a strong defense. All four teams held opponents to 58 or fewer points per game for the season. The two most recent Final Four teams (2018 and 2022) also had a respective scoring margin of 16.1 and 19.7 points a night. Defense has always been a cornerstone of Louisville’s program under Walz.
When Louisville played Baylor in the 2009 Sweet 16, Wheeler said the Cardinals couldn’t buy a bucket. They finished shooting 37% from the field but held the Bears to a 25% clip from the floor and 9% from 3-point range in the 56-39 victory.
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“He just instilled in us that, offensively, you’re not always going to be on,” Wheeler said of Walz. “The ball doesn’t bounce your way, but with defense, it travels. And I think as long as you can stick to your principles and continue to believe in that, it’ll change. The offense will finally come.”
For as well as this year’s Cardinals squad has played on offense, the defense has also been strong. Walz raised some concerns about their defensive effort over the last few games, but the team has still held its opponents to 60.8 points per game with a plus-20.9 scoring margin. That ranks 10th-best nationally this season and is higher than each of the Final Four teams’ scoring margins.
The depth and balance of the roster has been the biggest difference in this year’s team from the Final Four squads of the past. But it can be the current Cardinals’ biggest advantage. While Angel McCoughtry, Shoni Schimmel, Asia “AD” Durr and Hailey Van Lith were the scoring superstars of the past, this year’s squad has a galaxy of stars who take turns shining. Taj Roberts is the team’s leading scorer, but UofL has had players, from starters to reserves, step up in big moments throughout the season. Four Cardinals, including Roberts, have multiple 20-point performances.
Five players are averaging nine or more points, and six players are averaging 20 or more minutes per game. Though the 2012-13 squad also had five players with nine or more points per game, and the 2017-18 team featured six Cardinals who averaged 20-plus minutes, this year’s squad is the only one to have both.
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“I love watching them play,” Wheeler said. “I think it’s really, really fun. … I don’t know that they have an Angel that’s out there scoring 20-25 points a game, but I feel like there’s pieces of all of us in all of them.”
Reach Louisville football, women’s basketball and baseball beat writer Alexis Cubit at acubit@gannett.com and follow her on X at @Alexis_Cubit.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: How Louisville women’s basketball can learn from past Final Four runs