Cards win preseason WNIT with 97-92 O.T. win over O.U.

MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

-GIBBS HAS 23 IN CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

What a wild and wooly afternoon of basketball in Norman on Sunday...Louisville overcoming a 17-2 early deficit to win in overtime 97-92. Asia Taylor and Sara Hammond were named to the All-Tournament team and Sara was selected the MVP.

This one couldn't have started much worse for Walz's women. Five minutes of cold shooting left Louisville on the short end of a 17-2 opening salvo from Sherri Coale's Sooners.

The Cards started to battle back after 300 seconds of sub-par hoops. Megan Deines' free throw brought Louisville back to within ten at 27-17 with 9:30 left. A 17-8 run got the Cards within one at 35-34. Tia Gibbs' three gave Louisville their first lead of the game with 2:25 remaining and the Cards built upon it...taking a 48-43 lead to the locker room.

Gibbs was unconscious in the first half...with 20 points. The Cards outscored OU 46-26 in the final fifteen minutes of the half and it looked like the rout might be on.

The Cards started the second half strong. 50-40 Cards after the first seven minutes and Louisville increased that to 70-58 on a Shoni three with 8:18 showing on the clock.

Oklahoma wasn't ready to go back to the prairie just yet, though.

A Sooner 10-0 run over the next three minutes pulled them to within two with 5:09 to go. A Shoni three made it 73-68 with 4:40 left. OU rallied to tie it a 73-73 over the next minute. They regained the lead 76-73 on a Carter three and led 83-77 with 1:28 left in regulation.

It looked like game over...but the Cards were not to be denied. Shoni hit a layup and got a free throw. Sara Hammond's two free throws with 51 seconds to go to make it 83-82 Sooners. Aaryn Ellenberg's jumper gave OU an 85-82 lead...but Jude Schimmel went coast-to-coast on a layup to make it 85-84 with 17 seconds. After an OU 1-2 at the line, Jude did it again...driving the length of the court for another layup to tie it 86-86 with 13 seconds on the clock.

Extra session!

OU hit a free throw to gain a 87-86 lead to start the overtime. The Cards rolled off the next nine points...a Nita Slaughter three, Shoni steal and layup, a Jude layup on a Shoni pass and Sara Hammond strong inside gave UofL a 95-87 edge and 1:45 to go.

OU made one last charge...getting to within 95-92 on an Ellenberg three with 32 seconds left. The Sooners then missed two threes over the next 26 seconds and Asia Taylor put the icing on the cake with two free throws with 6 seconds left to provide the final 97-92 Cardinal win.

CARDS WIN! CARDS WIN!

Louisville shot 42% for the contest and went 9-29 from three point range. A 20-27 effort from the free throw line gave the Cards a 77% stat line.

Gibbs had 23 points to lead Louisville and had eight boards. Shoni added 16 to the scoring stats (all in the final 25 minutes) and Nita buried three threes as part of her 15 points. Asia Taylor recorded a double-double with 10 points and grabs and Jude Schimmel ended up with eight.

With the win, Jeff Walz gets his 152nd of his career at Louisville....which ties him with Bud Childers for the most in UofL hoops history for a coach.

The Cards return to the KFC YUM! Center to face Ohio Thursday night at 7 p.m.

THE FINAL WORD

Gotta love the Cards gutty comeback effort after looking like the blowout was on early. It is so good to see Tia Gibbs back and producing like she did three years ago. This win was a road effort early in the season that shows the Cards have multiple weapons...consider Smith and Shoni played a total of eight minutes in the first half and Louisville led by five.

Nervous moments in the end when Sooners went up by six with 1:28 left in regulation for me...but the Cards did what they had to do to force the OT...including attack Yorkie Jude with two un-guarded layups to guide them back.

The questionable move to play this one at OU when Louisville was clearly the higher seed and better squad backfires for the anti-Cardinal WNIT planners and designers.

Put this one in the YUM! and no way that OU breaks out to a 17-2 early lead or comes back to take it to OT. Walz's technical was for stepping outside the coaches box. Thishappens about 80 times a game...so why call it today?

Bad girl

Coale isn't the prom queen we all thought, I guess. A CBS close-up of her during a time out showed her clearly saying to a player in the huddle:

"What the f&%$ were you thinking?"

( Bad girl, BIG HAIR...Yummy.) Ms. Coale has a potty mouth. If the obviously pro-Sooner refs had seen or heard Walz mouth something like that...they would have tossed him from the game and taken him off the court bound and gagged.

Maybe it's a BIG 12 conference thing....those "Girls Gone Wild" WBB Coaches.

And it's still the middle of November. A fun season awaits.

-paulie