LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- After a February shooting slump stretched through Louisville's run in the ACC tournament, Mariya Moore received some advice from her coach. With nearly two weeks between the end of the conference tournament and the start of the NCAA tournament, he told her to shoot all she could on her own, and he told her to make sure she followed her shot each time.
"If it ain't going in," Jeff Walz recalled Monday night with the same deadpan delivery he likely used the first time around, "at least go run and try and rebound it."
Not much more than four minutes into No. 4 Louisville's second-round NCAA tournament game against No. 5 Tennessee, Moore drove down the right side of the lane. But instead of continuing to the basket or pulling up for a jumper, instead of looking for a shot of any kind, she spun and threw the ball back to open teammate Kylee Shook at the top of the key. Shook hit a 3-pointer.
Setting up a teammate for success is nothing new for Moore, a 6-foot forward who leads the team in assists. Walz said Monday that she has the highest basketball IQ of any player he has coached in more than two decades as a college assistant or head coach. She sees the open teammates.
But for a player who had made just 16 shots in her previous seven games, who had made just one of her most recent 21 attempts from the 3-point line -- and that a bank shot -- it made it easy to wonder just how much she believed in what was once a smooth shooting stroke.
Moore didn't let anyone wonder very long. Barely a minute later, she slipped into open space on the right wing. When Louisville reversed the ball from the opposite side before the Tennessee defense could shift, she stepped into her shot and calmly hit the 3-pointer.
It was the first of five she hit in Louisville's 75-64 win, a game in which her 19 points and confident shooting carried her team until leading scorer Asia Durr found a shot misplaced for most of the second and third quarters. Durr worked out of her 20-minute slump and led all scorers with 23 points. She had the chance because Moore worked out of a month-long funk.
Go back to that first 3-pointer. Moore didn't actually continue her movement toward the basket, but she stayed with the shot. As pure a shot as she possesses, Moore isn't one to spend long hours shooting for the fun of it. She'd rather be playing games with other people on the court. But the past couple of weeks, with only a manager to rebound, she used the break before the tournament to do as her coach suggested.
She did it in the first round, when she took only three shots but made two from the 3-point line. She did it Monday, even as she dealt with leg cramps throughout the second half.
"I definitely listened to what he said," Moore said. "Because my way hasn't been working."
It is the same advice Walz gave to Antonita Slaughter after she suffered through a woeful February shooting slump in 2013. Some people will remember what happened next, specifically the shooting night Slaughter had in a Sweet 16 upset for the ages against top-seeded Baylor.
And wouldn't you know it, Louisville is going to Oklahoma City to play top-seeded Baylor.
These lessons are neither alchemy nor advanced algebra. It's simple. It's about repetition.
"The reason I tell them that is because then you stay with your shoot," Walz said. "You're shooting, and you're going forward after you land, instead of falling back. And then you make one or two, and your confidence gets going. She hits that first one in the first half, and if you watch it on the film, she shoots it, and she steps forward."
Times change. The building in which Monday's game was played wasn't even open the last time Tennessee won a national championship in 2008. Now it's a palace fit for a champion or to host a Final Four. It's a building in which Monday's crowd, while noisy enough to provide a nice home-court advantage, felt paltry compared to the throngs drawn during the regular season.
There was a time when programs such as Louisville played in buildings better labeled gymnasiums than arenas, when opposing teams never had a big three that could match up with Tennessee's big three. The Lady Vols might lose from time to time, but they were rarely beaten. That isn't the case anymore. Tennessee came in with Diamond DeShields, Jaime Nared and Mercedes Russell, but Louisville hosted because Moore, Durr and Myisha Hines-Allen are just as good and believed Louisville offered just as good a path to championships as Knoxville.
It came down to which group rose to the occasion.
As Tennessee closed the third quarter with a mini-run that reclaimed a lead it chased most of the game, Nared had scored more points by herself than Durr and Hines-Allen had scored combined for the Cardinals -- and they had taken roughly 20 more shots. But Moore kept providing points. She scored eight quick points in the fourth to erase the deficit, bounding up the court after one 3-pointer as the crowd rose to its feet behind her.
"She's a great 3-point shooter, but when she's not making shots, she can kind of get down on herself," Hines-Allen said. "We do a great job of picking her up. And today was a great day for her. When she started hitting the 3s, just seeing the emotion on her face and the emotion that she showed, it makes you want to play even harder. ...
"We had to step up and finish this game. Mariya stepped up, so why don't we all do it too?"
Cue Durr. One of the best-regarded recruits in the nation a year ago, as a freshman Durr struggled with a groin injury that ate at both her minutes and her confidence. She had a good enough freshman season but not a great one. She had a good enough second-round game at home against DePaul in the NCAA tournament but not a great enough one to fend off the upset.
She hit three of her first four shots Monday, then missed 13 of her next 15. But she kept shooting and kept looking for shots.
Although very likely the product of some degree of hyperbole, both Walz and associate head coach Stephanie Norman suggested that a rushed attempt in the first quarter was the first bad shot Durr had taken all season. And Walz liked it. The coaches plead with Durr to shoot more, to be more selfish in that sense.
Rarely has her confidence wavered this season.
"Maybe the first couple of games because we said, 'We're not having this again, Asia,'" Norman said. "When you put as much work into your game as that kid does, there's no reason you shouldn't feel like you could carry any team or dominate any opponent. She's in that make of an Angel McCoughtry or a Shoni Schimmel, in terms of their complete love affair for the game."
Durr hit her final three attempts, each with an impressive degree of difficulty. With the seconds ticking away, Moore claimed an offensive rebound that well and truly squelched any thought of a Tennessee miracle.
Louisville wasn't ready for the Sweet 16 a season ago, too young and too unsure of what was required.
They are ready now. Moore will follow her shot all the way to Oklahoma City.