(Guru's Note: Stephen was on the scene with Rutgers; the Guru was on the home front but heading for Storrs for the UConn-UNC tilt.)
By Stephen K. Lee
PISCATAWAY – With solid shooting from both the field and the free throw line, the Rutgers women’s basketball team earned its tenth straight win on Sunday, downing Louisville 70-57 at home at the Louis A. Brown Athletic Center.
The No.5 Scarlet Knights (15-2, 5-0 Big East) shot 50 percent from the floor in the first half.
After RU built a 32-23 halftime advantage and held Big East leading scorer Angel McCoughtry to just three points on 1-of-6 shooting, a nine-point game between the conference rivals turned into a foul fest with Louisville (12-6, 1-4) committing 17 second-half fouls in an effort to change the game’s tempo.
Louisville coach Jeff Walz said that with the Cardinals down 51-42 with about six minutes left in the game, he decided to take his chances with a hack-a-Kia-Vaughn strategy, sending the Rutgers center to the line.
“We tried to foul,” said Walz, who is in his first year as Cardinals head coach after serving as an assistant at Maryland. “We’re down 10 and we can’t stop them and… so we just rolled the dice and said, ‘Let’s try to foul her.’”
Vaughn, who was making 42.4 percent of her free throws entering Sunday’s game, stepped up big for Rutgers, hitting nine of 13 from the charity stripe in the game’s closing minutes. The junior center blamed her struggles from this season for Walz’s targeting her as a free-throw dud.
“I did that to myself because of the beginning of the season with not being consistent and making free throws,” said Vaughn, who finished with 15 points and nine rebounds. “But he shouldn’t doubt me because when it’s time to put them in, I put them in.”
During a few stretches of the game, Louisville guard Candyce Bingham and McCoughtry were yelling at each other out of frustration.
Rutgers senior point guard Matee Ajavon said Rutgers fed off of Louisville’s troubles.
“I guess we’re doing something good if they’re yelling at each other,” said Ajavon, who finished with a game-high 23 points on 8-of-12 shooting. “I think it riles us up to keep on doing what we’re doing to make them yell at each other.”
Rutgers sophomore guard Epiphanny Prince was the primary source of McCoughtry’s struggles in the first half.
“I just wanted to be a pest to her,” said Prince, who finished with 13 points and five rebounds. “I could tell she was getting a little frustrated. She kept running to the ref and complaining about little things. So, I just wanted to keep getting inside her head and playing her tight and just try to focus on boxing out since she’s a great rebounder.”
Prince added that it was tiring guarding McCoughtry because the Cardinals would screen for their star player a lot to get her open looks.
Rutgers head coach C. Vivian Stringer said that she wanted Prince to provide defense on McCoughtry from outside in order to allow the Scarlet Knights to allow senior guard/forward Essence Carson, RU’s best defender, to defend the post and keep junior forward Heather Zurich, an offensive specialist, on the floor.
“We decided the one person who might be able to buy some minutes until we attacked the inside was Epiphanny,” Stringer said. “Epiphanny could probably play McCoughtry before they realize that Epiphanny is too small to play McCoughtry and they went to post. But they never did.”
Prince played McCoughtry so well that Stringer favored keeping her on McCoughtry for the majority of the game.
The first half was close for the first ten minutes. Then, with 7:55 remaining before halftime, the Scarlet Knights took a 19-17 lead when Ajavon hit a three pointer from the corner. The Knights outscored the Cardinals 16-6 for the remainder of the period.
McCoughtry overcame her rough first half and finished with 20 points and 13 rebounds, both team-highs for Louisville.
Stringer said that, despite the win, she still sees many problem areas Rutgers needs to work on.
“I never see that we won,” she said. “I look at the different aspects of the game. What continues to concern me is rebounding. In the crucial part of that game, (Louisville) got second and third opportunities – those you lose. They suffered at the free throw line, they missed free throws they wouldn’t have normally missed. So let’s not play jokes. I’m not willing to accept that.”
“It’s just that I’m coaching now, but I’m coaching for the future and what I know we’ve got to do.
We do need to put it all together at one time, and we probably will.”
Rutgers continues its conference stretch of games, heading to Cincinnati to face the Bearcats (10-7, 1-4) at 7:00 p.m. on Jan. 22.
NOTES: For the second time this season, the Scarlet Knights had four players finish in double-digit scoring with Ajavon (23 points), Vaughn (15), Carson (14) and Prince (13) all hitting their strides offensively.
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