Louisville Falls to Duke in Battle of Undefeated ACC Squads

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Louisville women's basketball program's lengthy winning streak has officially come to an end.

Hosting Duke for a ranked showdown between the last two undefeated teams in ACC play and the two hottest teams in the conference, the Cardinals could not capitalize on the home court advantage, falling 59-58 to the Blue Devils in a Thursday night thriller at the KFC Yum! Center.

The No. 6 Cardinals (21-4, 11-1 ACC) dug themselves into a 15-point deficit to start out, but were able to battle back, and even had a chance to force overtime against the No. 17 Blue Devils (17-6, 12-0 ACC) in the closing seconds.

Imari Berry was fouled on the fast break with 1.1 seconds left and Louisville trailing by two. She made the first free throw, but her second bounced off the right iron.

Louisville sees their best start to ACC play in program history come to an end, as well as their 14-game winning stream. They previously had not lost since suffering a narrow 79-77 loss to No. 3 South Carolina back on Dec. 4.

Meanwhile, Duke extends their own winning streak to 14, and take sole possession of the top of the ACC standings with six regular season games left. While Louisville does not hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over Duke, they have a 2.5-game lead over the three teams tied for third in the ACC standings.

Louisville couldn't get much going offensively. They connected on a season-low 33.9 percent of their field goal attempts, were just 5-of-17 on three-point tries, and had more turnovers (12) than assists (11) for just the fifth time this season.

The Cardinals were a bit better on defense, but still struggled at times on that end of the floot. They held the Blue Devils to 42.6 percent from the field and 4-of-17 on threes, but gave up 30 points in the paint and were out-rebounded 40-to-35.

Elif Istanbulluoglu led Louisville in scoring with 13 points, while Laura Ziegler and Reyna Scott added 11 points. Three Duke players also broke double figures, led by a 15-point effort from Toby Fournier.

It would have been hard for Louisville to get off to a worse start than they did. They missed their first eight shot attempts while allowing Duke to hit their first seven, resulting in falling behind 16-1 just over five minutes into the contest.

The Cardinals found some offense midway through the opening quarter, but still shot only 3-of-16 in the period. Add in some defensive woes down low, letting the Blue Devils go 10-of-14, and they found themselves down 23-11 though the first quarter.

Louisville did take a step forward on both ends of the court in the second quarter, but could only keep pace with Duke instead of threatening to pull ahead of them. The Cards did out-shoot their visitors in this period, going 7-of-16 to the Devils' 6-of-19, but could only close the gap to 37-27 at the half.

In the third quarter, Louisville was bitten hard by the turnover bug, coughing it six times in the period alone. However, when not turning it over, they did go 7-of-15 in the period, while continuing to rely on their defense to keep them in the game, holding Duke to 4-of-12 in the third. Had it not been for the turnovers, they would have taken the lead, but had to settle for trailing just 46-43 heading to the fourth quarter.

The Cardinals got a game-tying three-point play from Scott and a go-ahead three from Ziegler to start the fourth, but things quickly fell apart from there. They proceeded to miss their next nine shots, allowing the Blue Devils to fire off an 11-1 run despite shooting only 3-of-9 in the period. UofL was able get back within striking distance in the final minutes, but couldn't get over the hump again.

Next up, Louisville heads back on the road for a matchup at Syracuse. Tip-off against the Orange from the JMA Wireless Dome is set for Sunday, Feb. 8 at 12:00 p.m. EST.

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