University of Louisville
DEPAUL
No. 10 Louisville Defeats DePaul, 78-60
January 03, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 3, 2009
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Angel McCoughtry scored 25 points to lead No. 10 Louisville to a 78-60 win over DePaul in both team's Big East opener on Saturday. It was the seventh time this season that McCoughtry has scored 21 or more.
She added eight rebounds and Candyce Bingham had 15 points and 12 rebounds in lifting the Cardinals (14-1, 1-0) to their ninth straight win. The Cardinals will try to extend that streak when they host Big East opponent Seton Hall in their next game.
"It just gives us a lot of confidence, going into Tuesday that we can start off strong instead of having to be down 0-4, then try to make a run," Bingham said.
Louisville actually started 0-3 in the Big East last season before finishing with a conference record of 10-6. Cardinals' coach Jeff Walz knows the competition he'll be facing the rest of the way, including No. 15 Rutgers on Jan. 11, so he's not ready to have a banner printed up to hang in Freedom Hall.
"We started 0-3 last year, everything turned out OK so I'll tell you after our 16 games if that was a good thing or a bad thing," Walz said.
For more than half the game the Blue Demons looked like they might play the spoiler.
Deirdre Naughton scored 21 points and Natasha Williams had 19 points for DePaul (12-3, 0-1). Williams scored all her points in the paint, many on easy layups after an entry pass over the head of a Cardinal defender playing in front of her.
"They were getting too many inside buckets," McCoughtry said.
The Blue Demons had their largest lead of the game in the first half, 24-16, after a three-point play by Naughton with 6:19 to play.
The Cardinals then scored 12 in a row, including two 3-pointers and a layup by freshman guard Becky Burke. Louisville held onto the lead going into halftime, 34-33, despite shooting 33 percent in the half.
"It showed that we're maturing as a team and that's encouraging to me," Walz said.
The Blue Demons kept fighting, taking the lead back just 15 seconds into the second half on a jump shot by Keisha Hampton, who finished with 12 points.
There were eight ties and lead changes in the second half before Louisville took the lead for good after a jump shot by McCoughtry with 14:08 to play.
Four Blue Demons played more than 30 minutes in the game and couldn't keep up down the stretch. The Cardinals' bench outscored the Blue Demons' 26-0. Burke and fellow freshmen Gwen Rucker, Mary Jackson, and Monique Reid combined for 21 points.
"I thought we were going to be a deeper team than we were," DePaul coach Doug Bruno said. "Where they're doing a great job is developing younger kids who are doing a really nice job of coming on as freshmen."
The Cardinals had 14 steals in the game, 10 in the first half, and DePaul turned it over 21 times.
