Georgia Tech WBB outshot by #20 Louisville, fall 80-62

McCAMISH PAVILION — Georgia Tech Women’s Basketball remained winless against #20 Louisville in their 11th meeting, losing 80-62. While Kara Dunn led Tech with 17 points and a perfect 6-6 from the free throw line, Louisville simply had a stellar shooting night and Tech’s defense was not up to the level. Louisville shot 56% led by Sydney Taylor with 31 points off the bench (she had been averaging 10.6 this season).

“Louisville shot the ball really well tonight, I think it’s more showing our defense let us down. It needs a lot of work. We let up 12 threes, that’s a lot,” said Tech head coach Nell Fortner after the game.

Louisville’s 12 threes came at 55% clip, all but one of them coming from bench players. Taylor’s seven threes were her most this season, tying her career high she set last season playing for UMass.

“We have to expect in the ACC that anybody any night can shoot 10 times better than they have in the past. It’s something you have to adjust to. One thing we have to work on is adjusting faster,” said Tech sophomore guard Kara Dunn.

Tech now is 15-13 (6-10 ACC) this season, and will need to win out their final two games to have any hope of getting a bye from the first day of the ACC Tournament, where they currently have the #10-seed, one game behind Miami at 6-8.

Louisville on the other hand desperately needed this win, as they are playing to potentially host NCAA Tournament games if they can keep winning and climb into the top 16 national seeds.

The theme of this game felt a lot like how most of the losses have been: we had some good moments on both sides of the ball, including a great trap in the fourth quarter forcing a Louisville timeout, but they were sporadic.

“I thought we did some really good things in spurts, but it’s not a 40-minute consistent thing...it’s spotty. You gotta have that kind of effort all the time to play at the higher level. Sometimes we’re tired, sometimes we just don’t have the effort to do it,” said Fortner.

With two games to go, Tech is in a better place record-wise than last season. They were 13-15 at the 28 game mark last year, and this season are above .500 with winnable games left against Wake Forest and Miami. I anticipate a topic this week on Scions of the Southland will be about how acceptable the progress has been year over year with the Dunn/Morgan/Noguero sophomore core. Would certainly love to hear from y’all in the comments how y’all feel right now.

How it happened

Q1: Dunn opened the scoring with her 600th point to help give Tech a 4-0 early lead. Ball security very quickly was an issue. With about four minutes left in the first Georgia Tech had only six points and five turnovers. The turnovers contributed heavily to Louisville’s 17-2 run that took up most of the first quarter before Kara, Tonie, and Augustinaite all hit buckets to shrink Louisville’s lead to eight by the end.

Q2 (21-13 Louisville): This quarter stayed plagued by some ugly basketball by Tech with Louisville picking up some turnovers themselves. Neither team scored for almost two and a half minutes. This is where Taylor went off, scoring 15 points including converting a four-point play and a follow up three within a minute to put the Cardinals up 17.

Q3 (43-28 Louisville): The third started better for Tech. The Jackets’s success on offense forced a couple of Cardinal turnovers and brought their lead down to nine. Louisville was able to stretch their lead back to 14 due to a three-minute plus scoring drought from the Jackets. Louisville shot a perfect 4-4 from three Taylor was six for nine and Curry, funny enough, was three for five through the end of the third.

Q4 (63-40 Louisville): Dunn opened the fourth with a three-point play on the inbound and followed it with a couple free throws. The Jackets were able to chip away at the lead by scoring on the same play three possessions in a row to go on an 11-0 run. Right when Tech maybe had a shot to actually threaten the lead down 11 with over five minutes to go, Louisville hit a couple quick buckets to ice the game.

Stats via Georgia Tech

Game Leaders:

Points: Sydney Taylor (LOU) - 31

Assists: Tonie Morgan (GT)/Kiki Jefferson (LOU) - 5

Rebounds: Olivia Cochran (LOU) - 12

Turnovers: Kara Dunn (GT) - 5

Georgia Tech Women’s Basketball next plays Sunday, February 25 against Wake Forest at McCamish Pavilion at 2 p.m.