- Hailey Van Lith led Louisville past the Texas Longhorns and into the Sweet 16 of March Madness.
- After the game, Texas' Sonya Morris appeared to smack-talk Van Lith in the handshake line.
Hailey Van Lith has "no hard feelings" after an opposing player smack-talked her during postgame handshakes.
The junior guard scored a game-high 21 points to lead the No. 5 Louisville Cardinals to a 73-51 win over the fourth-seeded Texas Longhorns and a sixth-straight Sweet 16 appearance. After the final buzzer sounded, Van Lith joined her teammates in the handshake line and quickly found herself exchanging words with Texas guard Sonya Morris.
As the 5-foot-10 graduate student came face-to-face with Van Lith, she grabbed her hand and appeared to say "honorable mention." Just a week before Monday's game, the Louisville star appeared disappointed to learn that she had narrowly missed all three All-America teams but earned honorable mention status as one of the players receiving votes from the committee.
—Tyler Greever (@Tyler_Greever) March 21, 2023
But after tempers cooled and Van Lith celebrated the victory with her team — including head coach Jeff Walz, who appears entirely unperturbed in the clip above — she headed to the Cardinals' postgame press conference with a level head. Unsurprisingly, she fielded a question about her on-air spat, and she offered a mature response so as not "to dim down the fact that we played really, really well."
"I have all the respect in the world for Texas, no hard feelings," Van Lith said. "You know, sports can get chippy and the moment you play in the heat — at the end of the day I'm going to let it go. No hard feelings."
"I assume that they will do the same, and yeah, I'm just proud of our win," she added. "I don't want to focus on what happened at the end."
When The Courier-Journal's Alexis Cubit asked more privately what was said on the handshake line, Van Lith offered a bit more detail about the "frustration going on" that may have led to the seemingly hostile interaction.
"I'm not gonna let no one disrespect me, but my teammates got my back," she said. "And I don't have nothing bad to say. They're coached great. They have great players. So it is what it is.
"People are sad when they lose," Van Lith added. "I'd be sad, too."
But she has nothing to be sad about now. Van Lith and Louisville are headed to Seattle for a Sweet 16 matchup against the No. 8 Ole Miss Rebels.
With a win back in her home state on Friday, the 5-foot-7 Wenatchee, Washington, native would advance to the third Elite Eight of her college career. The Cardinals would have a shot at punching their ticket to a second-consecutive Final Four.
"It means a lot," Van Lith said. "I haven't been to see my family in a while. A lot of my grandparents have suffered from some illnesses lately, so they haven't been able to travel and watch me play. Just getting to play in front of those people in my hometown going to be really special for me, and it's really important for my parents, too, getting to bring me back home.
"It was the perfect situation and we executed beautifully, and we got there," she added. "Like I've been saying this whole tournament, we just need the opportunity, and we got one for next game. So we are going to take advantage of it."