Louisville women's basketball beats No. 11 UNC for its 2nd win over top-25 foe this season

Sunday’s game felt different.

With the regular season dwindling down, Louisville’s margin for error and chance at wins continues to shrink. The Cardinals (17-8, 8-4 ACC) knew that and secured a much-needed 62-55 win over No. 11 North Carolina (17-6, 8-4) on Sunday, in a nationally televised game on ESPN2, at the KFC Yum! Center.

The victory is the Cardinals' second over a top-25 team this season, and its first since beating Texas in November. Junior guard Hailey Van Lith and graduate guard Chrislyn Carr led the way for Louisville, tying for a game-high 17 points apiece. And freshman forward Nyla Harris grabbed a career-high 12 rebounds in the win on a day where the Cards donned pink jerseys to raise money and awareness for cancer.

"What we did finally, we didn't get outscored by like 18. We guarded and that's what we have not done," U of L coach Jeff Walz said about his team's defensive effort, which held the Tar Heels to 33% shooting from the field. "It's 21-20 with 5:04 to go (in the second quarter) and we sit there and hold them to four points over five minutes. Now, we only scored two. But, that's the trademark of what we've been able to do here in the past is if we're not scoring, we're not gonna let you score or at least make it as difficult as we can.

"It was nice to see. I mean, it was really, really nice to see. I thought the kids competed. I thought they played hard. It was great."

UNC, which had won eight games in a row prior to Sunday's loss, was without two of its usual starters in junior guard Alyssa Ustby (lower body injury) and redshirt senior guard Eva Hodgson (upper body condition).

Their absence helped provide an opportunity for the Cardinals to achieve something even last season's Final Four team couldn't. Louisville fell at UNC 66-65 on Feb. 17, 2022 to a Tar Heels' team that would go on to reach the Sweet 16.

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But this year’s group of Cardinals entered Sunday’s game projected as a No. 8 seed in the NCAA tournament and sitting at sixth in the ACC standings with four losses in league play.

The win gave the Cardinals some breathing room as they avoided a fifth ACC loss, which would have been a first for the program that joined the league in 2013.

The game wasn’t without its struggles, though.

In what has become a theme this season, there were turnovers and missed shots that turned into shooting lulls spanning several minutes. On two occasions in the first half, Louisville's first possession out of a timeout resulted in a shot clock violation. Shortly after intermission, it turned the ball over as Walz buried his head into his hands on the bench.

That wasn't the end of his frustrations as he recorded his second technical foul in as many weeks when senior guard Norika Konno was called for a foul on UNC junior guard Deja Kelly on a 3-point attempt at the 8:57 mark in the third quarter.

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Although the sequence ended in six points for the Tar Heels — Kelly’s three, a free throw from junior guard Kennedy Todd-Williams and a basket from Anya Poole — which gave them a 32-23 lead, the Cardinals built momentum off the stretch. They displayed the grit and toughness the program was built on in their response. But at various parts of this season, that's been missing.

"For me personally, and I think for the rest of the team, coach Walz got that tech and it's like, 'OK, this is how we're doing it,'" fifth-year senior guard Mykasa Robinson said. "If coach Walz is going to put this much into it and the coaches are then it's the least we can do as players, so I think we really invested in one another that game and we played for each other."

That edge meant fighting a little harder for rebounds and Robinson, who had five points, eight rebounds and four assists, drawing two fouls to limit UNC’s scoring opportunities. It also meant Carr knocking down back-to-back 3-pointers in 38 seconds to help Louisville outscore the Tar Heels 25-11 in the final eight minutes of the third quarter to take a 48-43 lead. Van Lith was even back to her usual offensive form, after being held to single-digit scoring performances in her last two outings.

"I wasn't trying to get a technical foul to get our kids to play harder," Walz said. "I thought our kids were playing hard. You can only watch so much of it before you've got to make a statement because it was bad. It was not a good performance by any means. ... But, the kids came out and kept fighting and I was really proud of it."

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The effort pleased the roaring crowd, announced at 10,069, as fans at the arena stayed locked in for the final 10 minutes. The Cardinals had support; they just needed to hold on, and they did. UNC pulled within one point of Louisville after a 3-pointer from Paulina Paris for a 51-50 game with 6:10 left on the clock but that was followed by a 5-0 U of L run, which sealed the Tar Heels' fate.

"For us, it's response," Robinson said. "We talk about it a lot in practice. Everyone's gonna go on runs. It's a game of runs, basketball is, and how are we going to respond to adversity? So, I think we did a great job."

While Louisville has played in a few close games this season and recorded wins — against Pitt and Georgia Tech — it has also been on the losing side of down-to-the-wire contests, like its loss to Virginia Tech.

Sunday felt different. The grit the Cardinals had often been missing this season returned, and it helped them take down a top-25 foe as March inches closer.

"I think it's huge for us to get both of these wins," Carr said of Louisville's back-to-back wins over Syracuse last week and UNC on Sunday. "We just have to focus in practice, do the little things, clean the little things up and keep playing for each other. I feel like if we keep playing for each other we're going to be in great shape."

Reach Louisville football, women's basketball and baseball beat writer Alexis Cubit at acubit@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter at @Alexis_Cubit.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville women's basketball beats UNC with ACC win