Friday Cardinal Couple-Asia cleared for practice

FRIDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

-Asia Taylor cleared for practice

-Cards vs DePaul Saturday

-Some changes...

University of Louisville women's basketball team senior forward Asia Taylor has been cleared by physicians for practice with the squad. Asia averaged 5.6 ppg and 4.8 rebounds last year for the Cards, starting the last 13 games of the season and 20 overall for UofL in 2011-12.

Taylor suffered a hip injury over the summer and had surgery to repair it. Her return has been a highly anticipated event, along with Tia Gibbs...who also suffered a hip injury. Those darn hippies! Gibbs has begun running again, but there is no definite timeline yet on when she will return to full-time practice.

Good to have A-Tayy back. One of the most popular Lady Cards, Asia has been working hard for her return and we hope she can return soon to actual playing time for the Cards.

Her season highs were 14 points against Villanova and 13 rebounds vs. St. John's. Taylor achieved double figure scoring six times last season and grabbed 10 boards or more four times.

Her return to action gives Louisville needed additional strength on a front line that lost Shawnta Dyer a few games back with a season-ending knee injury. It also made Cardinal Couple co-owner Sonja extremely happy...Taylor has been her favorite player since the Columbus, OH native arrived on the campus back in the fall of 2009.

Our best take on Taylor's return is that she'll gradually be worked back into playing time minutes as her strength and basketball stamina returns. A fierce rebounder and lock-down defender, Taylor has seemed to save her best performances at UofL over the past three seasons for games at the end of the year. Prone to foul trouble at times because of her defensive aggressiveness, Taylor nevertheless provies Walz with another body to toss in the game to mix it up on the boards.

Taylor's experience and hustle will be a valuable commodity for Jeff Walz's squad as the Cards go into BIG EAST play. The Cards were looking rather stretched in available paint performers at times this season with Dyer's absence, Reid's knee issues and Walton's sore back. If the latter two get back to full strength and Taylor can eventually contribute effectively, it gives UofL a strong base of six players (Hammond, Vails, Reid, Taylor, Walton, Slaughter) who can go to the boards and provide inside scoring for the team.

Welcome back, A-Tayy! It'll be good to see #31 menacing the opponents on the court again.

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Louisville will face DePaul in Chicago Saturday at 6 p.m. to open BIG EAST conference play. We've heard reports that this one will be broadcast by the BIG EAST Network and picked up by WHAS TV locally.

It's the first of 16 BIG EAST conference games for the Cards before the BIG EAST Tournament. How do you think the Cards will do? We have a poll set up on the left side of the site where you can vote.

We'll have a full pre-game report and post-game wrap up here at CARDINAL COUPLE Saturday.

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We are experimenting with some format and accessibility changes here at Cardinal Couple. Nothing major that you, the reader, will probably notice...but a few things that will help us in the daily upkeep and posting of the site.

We have been plagued with an issue of site security from some wacko loan shark company in England that takes great pleasure in bombarding older posts here at Cardinal Couple with comments that are vague, nebulous and seemingly complimentary...but always end with a link to their website. We warn you NOT to "click on" these spams. We can usually catch and delete these if they make it through our firewalls...but they do tend to clog up our e-mails received at cardinalcouple@insightbb.com

Why a English loan company would want to offer high-interest loan opportunities to a primarily American readership is beyond us, but we never really understood the disco era either...

As Gilda Radner used to say...'It's always something."  We appreciate your paitence and understand as we fiddle about.
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