Women's Basketball 2014 NCAA Tournament Louisville Region Sweet Sixteen Game Breakdowns

2014 NCAA Tournament Louisville Region Sweet Sixteen Game Breakdowns

 

#1 Tennessee vs. #4 Maryland (Louisville, Kentucky)

St. John’s was tied with Tennessee early in the second half of their second round matchup, but then the Lady Vols tightened up their defense and pulled out a 16-point victory. The slow start also happened to Tennessee in the first round, leading #16 Northwestern State by just two points at the break. Coach Hollie Warlick rallied her team in both cases, but the competition is getting tougher and Tennessee is no longer at home. Maryland crushed Army in the first round and followed it up with a quality win at home over Texas in the second round.

Tennessee can certainly score in bunches, but Maryland will try and pick up the tempo in this contest. They do average about 84 points per game. More importantly, the Terrapins have plenty of quality depth and Coach Brenda Frese has no problem going ten deep. Tennessee usually goes just seven deep. If Maryland is going to pull off the upset, they will need to take full advantage of their depth by tiring out Tennessee and hoping for some foul trouble.

 

#3 Louisville vs. #7 LSU (Louisville, Kentucky)

Louisville is headed home for the regional semifinals and, possibly, finals. They beat Idaho handily in the first round and beat Iowa by 30 in the second round. That contest was in Iowa City and going to the Hawkeyes home floor and coming away with such a lopsided victory is huge. The Cardinals are playing great basketball right now and that should scare all the teams who may have to play Louisville in order to reach the Final Four. But LSU is on a roll too. The seven seed knocked off Georgia Tech before pulling off an upset over #2 West Virginia. The Lady Tiger defense allowed WVU to shoot just 30.2 percent from the floor. Even though LSU struggled to shoot themselves and went just 2-of-11 from beyond the arc, the defense did more than enough to win.

The scary thing is that LSU can play even better than they did against the Mountaineers. Theresa Plaisance, the team’s leading scorer, tallied just eight points. Danielle Ballard led the way with 22 points and 15 rebounds and has had a superb tournament thus far. If she can keep it up and Plaisance can knock down a few more shots, the Tigers can make this game extremely interesting. They will also need to keep up their defensive intensity, yet that may not be quite as simple against Louisville. The Cardinals shot 9-of-19 from long range against Iowa and it seemed like all of their shots were falling. Shoni Schimmel and Antonita Slaughter will keep knocking down shots at home and that would end LSU’s surprise tournament run in the Sweet Sixteen.

 

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