It started appropriately enough at the KFC Yum! Center where the Lady Cards opened their NCAA Tournament run with victories over Middle Tennessee and Purdue, the Cards followed this up by leaving home and heading west to Oklahoma City and that’s where things started to get interesting.
Baylor was quite possibly the best team in the country; their star Brittany Griner is the best female basketball player in the NCAA; Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban even semi-joked about drafting her for the NBA.
All that said Baylor was certainly a lock for the final four; nobody could stop Griner and the rest of the team was seemingly unstoppable as well.
That’s why it was such a shock when Louisville narrowly beat them 82-81; at that moment the Lady Cards started to turn heads as they continued to face off against Tennessee.
An annual powerhouse in women’s basketball, if Baylor couldn’t stop Louisville certainly the Lady Vols could; who were having a banner season. Which says something when every year there in the hunt for an NCAA championship.
So certainly the number five ranked Lady Cards would be outmatched by the power play of the Lady Vols; but the red and black shocked the tournament again by claiming a victory and making their way to the final four.
Next up, Louisville met California- again the Lady Cards were considered outmatched and again Louisville came up victors 64-57.
This victory meant that Louisville would join their male counterparts in the NCAA championship game, squaring off with probably the strongest dynasty in women’s college basketball, Connecticut. Ironically, the only college to win both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments in the same year; a feat University of Louisville athletic director, Tom Jurich, would like to duplicate.
The Lady Cards square off with UConn Tuesday night at 8:30; to see who will be cutting the nets in 2013.
Image courtesy of New York News Day
