Louisville's Season Ends to Iowa in Elite Eight
SEATTLE - Louisville women's basketball's quest for their first national title will have to wait another year.
Facing Iowa with a trip to the Final Four on the line, the Cardinals were unable to pull off the upset against the Hawkeyes, falling 97-83 Sunday at Climate Pledge Arena in the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Tournament.
No. 5 seeded Louisville concludes their season with a record of 26-12 and 12-6 in ACC play. At 30-6, No. 2 Iowa now heads to Dallas for a showdown against either No. 1 overall South Carolina or No. 2 Maryland for a spot in the national championship.
The Cardinals were overwhelmed by an other-worldly effort from Hawkeyes guard and Naismith Women's Player of the Year frontrunner Caitlin Clark. The guard finished with an absurd stat line of 41 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds, giving her the first 40-point triple-double in men's or women's NCAA Tournament history. She scored or assisted on 23 of Iowa's 29 made field goals.
Louisville did shoot 42.9 percent from the field and 8-of-22 on three-point attempts, but that was countered by a blazing hot 53.7 shooting percentage and 16-of-35 effort from long range by Iowa. Otherwise, the turnover (14-to-17) and rebounding (32-to-33) battles were relatively even.
The loss came in spite of a pair of great performances from Hailey Van Lith and Olivia Cochran. Van Lith notched 27 points for her fourth-straight NCAA Tournament game with 20+ points, while Cochran posted a 20-point/14-rebound double-double, both of which were career-highs.
Louisville also got double digit efforts from Chrislyn Carr and Mykasa Robinson, who finished with 11 and 10 points, respectively.
Louisville came out swinging, kicking off the game with an 8-0 run right out of the gates, with six of the points coming from Van Lith. However, Iowa woke up quickly, responding to out-score the Cardinals 25-13 over the rest of the first quarter. All of the Hawkeyes' points in the period were scored or assisted by Clark.
After the two teams traded blows early in the second quarter, Iowa was positioning themselves to run away with the game, using a 9-0 run to go up by as much as 12 points with 5:18 left. However, Louisville then closed the half on a 14-7 run to make it just a 48-43 deficit heading into the locker room, with Van Lith pouring in 11 during the run. By halftime alone, HVL had 17 points, while Clark had 21 points and eight assists.
The Cardinals scored the first two buckets of the second half to pull within one of the Hawkeyes, but then everything fell apart. Louisville proceeded to shoot 3-for-18 for the rest of the third quarter, whereas Iowa shot 9-of-16 during the period and 6-of-10 on threes. The Hawkeyes ended the quarter out-scoring UofL 30-14 after the two early buckets, using two different 11-0 runs in the process.
Louisville shooting didn't get much better in the fourth quarter, as they sunk just one of their first six field goal attempts of the period. Iowa then put the game into cruise control once they made it a 22-point game with just under six minutes to go. The Cardinals did threaten with a 13-1 run to make it 10-point game with just over two minutes left, but that's as close as they came.
(Photo of Hailey Van Lith: Kirby Lee - USA TODAY Sports)
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