Louisville's coach blasted the hosts of an ESPN debate show for overlooking his team in the Final Four

• Jeff Walz slammed the hosts of an ESPN debate show for underestimating his Louisville Cardinals.
• The 15-year head coach said the "PTI" hosts were "blatant about" counting out his top-seeded team.

MINNEAPOLIS — Jeff Walz isn't going to shy away from the obvious: His Louisville Cardinals are "the underdog" heading into the Final Four.

But that doesn't mean everyone — media, fans, opponents — should count out the No. 1 seed before Friday night's game even tips off.

"At least let's roll the balls out, and let's see what happens," Walz said during Thursday's press conference. "And [what skeptics say] might end up being true, but I'd give us a fighting shot at it."

The 15-year head coach of the up-and-coming Louisville program — which has punched its ticket to four Final Fours since 2009 — lamented the overarching narrative that his Cardinals have no shot against the mighty South Carolina Gamecocks in their national semifinal matchup.

Specifically, he called out Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon — the co-hosts of ESPN debate show "Pardon The Interruption" — for "talking about the UConn and Stanford matchup and [how] the winner of that game is going to play South Carolina."

They didn't even acknowledge that it could be Louisville advancing to Sunday's national championship game.

"I don't know if they know there's four teams in the Final Four," Walz said in jest. "I don't know if they've seen a women's basketball tournament or not, but we actually have four.

"When you do hear things like that and it's blatant about it, yeah, I would say we're the underdog," he added.

Walz and his Cardinals team have spoken out about not being included in national media narratives surrounding women's college basketball before. Louisville superstar Hailey Van Lith went so far as to say, "We don't need Barack Obama's bracket [and] we don't need Jimmy Fallon," when neither of the two celebrities picked her team to advance to the Final Four.

"The media isn't including us, this and that, blah blah blah, we're not being talked about as much," Van Lith added on Thursday. "We cannot control that. That is not our fault. If they want to sleep, let them sleep. We'll come in and do us, and we're going to do us to the best of our ability."

Louisville teams have relished the role of spoiler in years past. Walz referenced the 2013 NCAA Tournament — when the fifth-seeded Cardinals upset Brittney Griner and the top-seeded Baylor Bears in the Sweet 16.

Louisville went on to face UConn in the national championship game that year.

"When someone comes out and they just flat-out say the winner of the UConn-Stanford game is going to play South Carolina, yeah, that's — I'm sure they thought that the winner of that Tennessee-Oklahoma game was going to play Baylor in '13, too," Walz said Thursday. "But unfortunately that's not what took place."

Louisville will face Dawn Staley's two-loss Gamecocks in the first of two Final Four matchups in Minneapolis Friday night at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. And while Van Lith acknowledged that South Carolina is "a really great team" that poses a tough challenge for her squad, she's confident that playing the David to the Gamecocks' Goliath is "nothing that we're not capable of."

"We're going to focus on us, and we're going to do what we need to do to compete," she said. "We're playing together as one. We're doing this for each other. We're not doing this for the media's attention, we're doing it because we want to win for the 14 girls on this roster and the coaches that have worked so hard all year."

And when it comes to those ESPN guys?

"Yeah, we're not letting that get to our head," Van Lith said. "We're focused on us."