Louisville women's basketball coach Jeff Walz on coughing up late lead in ACC Tournament to Miami: 'My fault'

Louisville women's basketball coach Jeff Walz took the blame Friday after his Cardinals saw their sizeable late lead evaporate on their way to suffering a stunning 61-59 upset to No. 7 seed Miami in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.

Leading by 15 points with just 5:44 remaining, Louisville had a 99.9% chance to win the game, according to ESPN's Basketball Power Index (BPI), but Miami outscored the No. 2-seed Cardinals 17-0 in the final five minutes to complete its furious rally. The Hurricanes' Destiny Harden sealed the win with a turnaround jumper at the buzzer.

«I'll take the blame for this,» Walz said after Louisville lost before the semifinals for the first time since joining the ACC in 2015. «I tried to sub a little bit there at the end, trying to keep some fresh legs, possibly thinking you're going through a tournament, three games in hopefully three days, and we lost all of our rhythm offensively. And then we took some real poor shots, didn't defend, didn't guard. Everything that we needed to do to allow them to come back in the game, we did.»

«I'm not going to put the blame on these kids,» Walz added. «It's my fault… As a coach I learned a valuable lesson there today.»

Louisville (25-4) was one of the top four seeds in the NCAA Division I women's basketball's committee's third and final bracket reveal Monday, along with Stanford, South Carolina and NC State. But it could fall from the one-line if Baylor goes on a deep run in the Big-12 tournament this week in Kansas City, according to ESPN bracketologist Charlie Creme.

The game also marked the 10th time this season that a team lost after entering the fourth quarter with at least a 14-point lead, and Louisville is the only team that's been on the losing end of