On Sunday evening in Fort Worth, Texas — 2,000 miles from her hometown in Washington and an uncalculatable distance of how far she has actually come in the last five years — Hailey Van Lith played the final home game of her college career.
Led by its (generously measured) 5-foot-9 point guard Van Lith, the TCU Horned Frogs vanquished Louisville, 85-70, to advance to the program’s first Sweet 16. They made sure to do so with dramatics, allowing the Cardinals to cut a 21-point third-quarter lead to a single-digits game late in the fourth.
Van Lith played all 40 minutes and finished with 16 points, 10 assists and five rebounds. As time expired, she bent at the waist, catching her breath before throwing her arms skyward to the chants of “T-C-U, T-C-U.”
But leading up to the game, the elephant in the room didn’t try to hide itself. For the second season in a row, Van Lith, who had spent the first three years of her college career at Louisville, had a potential opportunity to face the Cardinals in the NCAA Tournament. A season ago, the collision was avoided when Middle Tennessee sent Louisville home early. This season, Van Lith’s reunion with Louisville came to fruition in Fort Worth.
TCU IS HEADED TO THE SWEET 16 FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PROGRAM HISTORY 🐸 Read more…
