The women’s basketball team failed to grab a second Big East home win Tuesday night. The ladies got their first BE win on the road last Saturday against St. John’s, but coming home they fell 57-54 to 17th-ranked Louisville. This dropped the Hoyas’ record to 11-6, 1-3 BE, and upped Louisville to 17-1, 3-1 BE.
The Louisville Cardinals took the lead at the start of the game and held the lead through the first half. The Hoyas attempted to keep the game close, but their shots kept failing.
They were stuck at four points for nearly five minutes, while the Cardinals advanced their score to 16. The Hoyas continued to trail the Cardinals the rest of the half, granting them a lead as big as 14 points.
The Hoyas did manage a surge near the end of the half. Louisville’s Angel McCoughtry sent sophomore forward Katrina Wheeler to the foul line with 3:13 left in the half, and Wheeler sank both shots. Junior guard Kristin Heidloff and junior forward Kieraah Marlow followed up with a three-pointer apiece. Two more foul shots from Marlow dropped the Hoyas’ deficit to only 4 points. The teams went into the half with the score 30-26 in favor of the Cardinals.
In the second half, the Cardinals once again came out stronger than the Hoyas. Louisville pulled their lead up to 10 points, but with a little less than four minutes gone in the second half the Hoyas began to find their game.
The Lady Hoyas took the lead from the Cardinals with 8:25 left on the clock and held it until 4:49 when Louisville Yuliya Tokova’s jump shot put the score in favor of the Cardinals, 49-48. In the last four minutes of the game the Hoyas only added six points to their score. They made four out of the eleven shots they took, including two of four foul shots. But the Cardinals were able to add eight points of their own.
A Louisville player stepped into the lane early on a freethrow to give Georgetown the ball, down only three points. Kieraah Marlow, the hot-hand for the Lady Hoyas, dribbled down the court and attempted a shot to tie the game, but sophomore forward Angel Mccoughtry blocked the shot to seal the win for the Cardinals.
“I was really happy with the way we competed and battled back in the second half,” said Head Coach Terri Williams-Flournoy of her team’s performance. “We didn’t rebound as well in the second [half] as I would have liked, but we executed down the stretch better than we have lately.”
Kieraah Marlow led the Hoyas with a total of 21. She was also second, along with junior center Aminata Diop, in rebounds, both grabbing 6. Katrina Wheeler led the Hoyas with 11 rebounds, but the Cardinals still out-rebounded the Hoyas 43-33. Louisville put two players into double digits in scoring, Angel Mccoughtry with 24 points and Jazz Covington with ten points.
The Lady Hoyas will have a bye and a short break before they get a chance to improve their Big East record as they take their game on the road to play Rutgers on Tuesday. They will then travel to McGrath arena in Chicago to battle the Blue Demons of DePaul.
