The Ladies host Louisville tonight at 7PM. The game will be on ACCNx. These two teams were picked to finish 1 and 2 in the ACC this year. The Hokies come in at 13-3, 2-3 and ranked #13. Louisville is 13-5, 4-1 and unranked but receiving votes(1 vote in the AP). Louisville has lost to all four ranked teams they have played this year and also lost at South Dakota State. The Hokies lost to Notre Dame, Clemson and Miami; and they beat UNC. We beat Kentucky 82-74 in Cassell; Louisville beat them 86-72 at Kentucky.
Louisville is an experienced team, starting 2 juniors and 3 grad students. Three of five starters are transfer from Syracuse, Florida State and Georgia. Hayley Van Lith, 5'7" Jr Guard is the team scoring leader, averaging 20.4 ppg. She is deadly from the FT line at 89.2% on the year. She only shoots 24% from three, but she is second only to Carr in attempts. Carr shoots 47% from three on 98 attempts. After Carr and Van Lith the starters only have 2 made threes on the season. The candidate for unexpected three point star of the night is #13 Merissah Russell, 5'11" Jr Guard, who plays 15 min/game and shoots 41% from three.
Louisville starts three players over 6' in #24 Jones 6'2", #44 Cochran 6'3", and #22 Dixon 6'5".
Only two Cardinals score in double figures, Van Lith and Carr; but Morgan and Cochran average 9.8 and 9.6 ppg. All of the starters average over 2 fouls per game and Cochran averages 3.2. Aggressive offense could help the Hokies put some Cardinals on the bench with foul trouble. Louisville averages 14.9 assists and 15.2 turnovers per game.
Van Lith plays almost 37 minutes per game; Carr plays over 30. Jones is on the court for 21 minutes and Cochran for 25.8 minutes. Robinson only starts occasionally; but she averages 25 min/game. Seven other players average 10-15 minutes per game. Louisville plays a lot more players than we do; they could wear us down in the fourth quarter.
This is another game we should win; but an off night by Amoore or King will make it tough to stay with the Cardinals.
Comments
I will be there cheering them on.
Fast paced game so far
Kitley needed 16 baskets to set the Tech All-Time record.
She is 5 of 5 in the First Quarter
HOKIES 20-14 after one quarter.
Amoore and King 0 for 5 in the first quarter.
36-32 at the Half
This is probably the first time I've heard Amoore and Dunn speak, and I gotta say, I'm digging the Aussie accents.
You can hear a lot of Amoore and some Kitley on their Queens of Cassell podcast on YouTube.
Of course they have a podcast.
Thanks for letting me know. I'll have to give it a listen.
58-57 Cards after 3
Double Double #10 for Kitley
Amoore and King 1 for 12 from three
Hack-a-Kitley seems to be in effect
If Amoore could hit a three or two, we'd be running away with this thing.
EDIT: And there it is!!
Live look:
She just did
I know our 3 point shooting has been abysmal, but damn this is a good heavyweight prize fight
"Amoore's not known for rebounding"
Was that triple double a joke to you?
FAM
Whew FAM
Always the best FAM beating Loserville in anything
Wham bam thank you FAM!!
King and Amoore did not have good games offensively. But they did enough on defense against Van Lith and Carr to win the game for us.
FAM it feels good to win one of these kinds of games
I will say Van Lith was amazing to watch. But damn were those refs bad for inconsistency.
Still FAM!
Best I can tell. Inconsistency is the best you're going to get with ACC refs.
ACC Refs mottos "We never fail to keep things close"
Without trying to find a replay, does anybody who watched it on TV have any idea what caused the Technical on Soule?
She made a contested bucket and there was contact but no foul. The Louisville player was on the floor and Soule bent down and talked some smack in her face lol.
That would do it.
Almost lost this game when we literally threw an inbounds pass right to louisville with under 40 seconds to play. That is typically a losing play. lucky to escape. Great win to get that demon off our backs. If we clean up some things- like turnovers and foul shooting, we can win the ACC this year. Since we are VT- one of the top transfer portal players transfers to us and she's hurt basically the whole year. That is another huge piece we could have. But we are VT.
That is three inbounds passes to the other team in two games - 2 off of made shots.
Just sloppy. And two technicals on Soule for running her mouth - she had one at High Point. I think she fouled out in both games. I love her passion, but that has to go.
Also too many sloppy lobs from Gregg into Kilter. Good for 1-2 turnovers a game.
Those are the type of things that cost you close games.
We were indeed lucky to pull that one out.
I am wondering if Osowu will be able to take a medical redshirt?
The magic formula is <30% of team games and occurs in the 1st half of the season.
Owusu is credited with having played in 7 games, so as long as the team has 24 games played, she will be eligible for a medical redshirt if she doesn't play again.
Additionally, it's possible, just because I don't know all the in's and out's but she may be eligible for a COVID year, as well.
Continuing that thought, Gregg, King, Geiman, and Kitley all appear to possibly be eligible for such a year, although I cannot guarantee that.
As much as I love Kitley as a player, she hasn't really improved in the last two years. She still doesn't have any type of outside shot and plays soft under the basket on offense.
Wife and kids attended and they had a blast.
Got some nice coffee/hot cocoa mugs for attending too.
They were out by 20 minutes before kickoff. I looked.
Amoore and Pedulla both need to reel in the out of control drives a bit. That and the Rainbow heaves. It's like watching mirror images from these two.
They have both been asked to play a lot of minutes for this point in the season. I wonder if that contributes to the mental lapses and lack of great mental execution.
Pedulla sometimes looks as if he tries too hard and forces some of his drives and ends up looking like a ball hog.
Amoore I think has a better shooting average then Pedulla. She also exhausts the opponents with her speed. I have never seen Pedulla do that.
This is actually not true on shooting. Not hard to top 33% from outside but she is at 30% He is 43% overall and she is 37%.
She does wear out opponents especially driving left.
Easily stand corrected. But it is amazing to watch her run people into the ground.
Absolutely. Its awesome seeing other guards hands on hips heaving breaths trying to run with her.