TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida State (16-3, 4-2) fell to fourth-ranked Louisville (18-1, 6-1) on Thursday 68-49 at the Donald L Tucker Civic Center. The loss snapped the Seminoles’ two-game win streak over the Cardinals dating back to 2017.
Despite the Seminole defense forcing 17 turnovers, the Cardinals were able to put up the second-highest point total against Florida State this season due in part to 29 points from All-American Asia Durr.
“Louisville is a great basketball team and Asia Durr is an All-American and we saw why tonight,” Florida State Head Coach Sue Semrau said. “We had our kids going out contesting the way they contested everybody all year and we needed to go out about that much further and credit to her, 29 is pretty impressive. We battled, we’re young, we knew that we’d need to use this opportunity to grow and I’m excited about that.”
Redshirt junior forward Kiah Gillespie lead the Seminoles with 13 points and six rebounds, followed by fellow junior Nicki Ekhomu with 11 points and four rebounds. The third of Florida State’s junior trio, Nausia Woolfolk, finished with eight points and led the Seminoles with four steals.
A 13-0 run by the Cardinals that spanned close to five minutes to end the first quarter put the Seminoles in a hole early that they simply could not get out of.
Florida State battled back to cut the deficit to nine at the half, but an 11-2 run by Louisville to open the third quarter all but sealed the victory for the visitors, as they maintained their double-digit lead for the remainder of the game.
The Cardinals shot 55.6% (25-of-45) and 45.5% (13-of-19) from beyond the arc compared to 32.1% (18-of-56) from the field by the Seminoles, their third worst shooting performance of the season. The previous two came in Florida State’s only two other losses to LSU and Clemson.
“I had a lot of freshmen in the entire game and I’m just excited about them,” Semrau said. “I continue to be encouraged with our growth. We don’t have to go out and beat the fourth-ranked team in the country this year. We need to go and take care of what we can take care of and we need to grow from this, and I know we will.”
Valencia Myers led the Seminole freshmen on the evening with nine points and three rebounds. Following suit was Morgan Jones with six points, shooting 3-of-3 from the field. Amaya Brown registered her third start for the garnet and gold, her second in as many games.
“As a team, although Asia Durr made lots of shots, I think we still pressured her,” Myers said. “We really tried our best on defense in boxing out and putting pressure on them. We stayed together, we didn’t fall apart, we fought hard.”
Florida State will look to bounce back and secure their fourth consecutive conference road victory when they travel to Virginia Tech to face the Hokies on Sunday, Jan. 27 at 2 p.m. at Cassell Coliseum. The game will be streamed live on ACC Network Extra.
