SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE


- Day One: AAC Tournament

- Softball wins on Day One of Red and Black Classic

- Cards face Houston tonight in AAC Quarterfinals

- Congrats Shoni, Asia, Sara, Bria and Nita

- Lacrosse heads to South Bend

- Adios...Tom Collen


Houston pulls the upset...Cincinnati hangs on

The AAC WBB Tournament is underway and in Friday night action the Houston Cougars knocked off #7 Memphis 73-67 in an upset and #8 Cincinnati held on to defeat #9 UCF 54-52.

UC advances to get UConn. They'll play that one at 2 p.m. today. Houston gets Louisville at 6 p.m. ESPN3 has it on line. In other games today, SMU and Rutgers start action at noon and Temple and USF are the nightcap at 8 p.m.

Thanks to the 21 brave souls who entered the Pick 'Em Contest here at Cardinal Couple. After the first two games there are only two people at 2-0...Sonja and Barry B. Seven games left. (If Barry B.'s picks win this thing, there will have to be several MAJOR upsets over the next three days and Temple will have beome the 2014 AAC Tournament winner).

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Softball slugs past UMass

Softball won their opening game in the Red and Black Classic yesterday 6-2 over UMass. Rachel LeCoq came on to pitch 5 innings of relief to lead the Cards to the win.

Kelsi Jones had a big afternoon for Louisville with three RBI's. Her home run to center field with Whitney Arion on base in the 4th. inning made it 4-2 Cards. The Cards put three singles together for two more runs in the sixth to secure the win.

Louisville faces Ohio State today at 5 p.m. and Illinois State around 7:30 p.m.

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Hoops tonght!

The WBB Cards get Houston at 6 p.m. tonight in the quarterfinals of the AAC Hoops fiesta in the Mohegan Sun Arena. Maybe a little surprising to Coach Walz and the Cards...the Cougars won but one conference game in the AAC this season...but got the job done last night against what appeared to be an out-of-sync and un-motivated Tigers squad.

Louisville beat Houston by 41 in the KFC YUM! Center back on Jan 21st. and by 19 in Houston on Feb 19th.

Cards will get the winner of USF and Temple on Sunday if they can dispatch of the upset-minded Coogs.

ESPN3 is the only televised/internet viewing outlet we know of as of now. Any other sources that you know of?  Tell us.

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Three Cards make 1st team...Nita awarded as a scholar!


Congratulations to Shoni, Asia, Sara and Bria !!!

The first three were selected to the 1st team AAC. Bria was picked for the second team.

And, way to go Nita! She is the AAC Women's Scholarship Athlete of the Year for 2013-14.

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Lacrosse to face the Irish

Kellie Young's lacrosse squad, coming off a 12-11 loss on the road to Ohio State heads north again for a Saturday afternoon tilt against Notre Dame. The Cards (4-2) do battle with the former BIG EAST foe and future ACC opponent at 1 p.m.

The Irish are 5-2...with losses to Boston College and North Carolina. Nikki Boltja, Faye Brust and Kay Morissette are the top guns when it comes to Cardinal scoring.

These two took it to two overtimes last year at the Louisville Lacrosse Staium...the Irish getting the 16-15 win.
#13 Notre Dame is the third ranked opponent the Cards have faced so far this season.

Collen out at Arkansas

Finally...news about Tom Collen. In 2006-07, he lead Louisville WBB to a 27-6 record and to the second round of the NCAA Tournament...where the Cards fell to Arizona State. He had Angel McCoughtry coming back for her junior year and a strong supporting cast returning.

He left. For Arkansas. His "dream job".

They let him go yesterday. All that glitters isn't gold. The saga below:

Arkansas fired women's basketball coach Tom Collen on Friday, bringing a close to a disappointing stretch for the program.

The Razorbacks (19-11) lost in the first round of the Southeastern Conference tournament to Mississippi on Wednesday, the eighth time in nine seasons they've failed to advance past the opening game.

Collen was 132-90 in seven seasons at Arkansas after being hired away from Louisville. However, the school reached the NCAA tournament just once, during the 2011-12 season, and the Razorbacks were 40-68 in SEC play — including a 6-10 finish this season.

Athletic director Jeff Long says the program hasn't "made the progress necessary" to compete in the SEC, and that a national search will begin immediately to find his replacement.

"I want to thank Tom and his staff for their hard work and dedication to the Razorback program and to our women's basketball student-athletes," Long said in a statement.

Collen made $415,691 annually and was under contract through March of 2016. He'll be paid $250,000 for each of the next two seasons as part of a buyout agreement in his contract.
Collen was an assistant coach at Arkansas under former coach Gary Blair from 1993-97 before becoming the head coach at Colorado State. He went 129-33 in five seasons there, earning national coach of the year honors in 1993 after 33-3 season.

The Ohio native was hired at Louisville following the 2002 season and coached there for four seasons, going 88-37 and reaching the NCAA tournament in his last three years.

He was brought to Arkansas with the hopes of rekindling the excitement around a program that had largely floundered since Blair left for Texas A&M in 2003.

However, despite success in nonconference play, Collen's teams largely struggled in the SEC. The Razorbacks had just one winning season in conference play, a 10-6 mark during the 2011-12 season — Collen's only team to reach the NCAA tournament.

"I appreciate the opportunity that I have been given at the University of Arkansas, and I'm disappointed my time here is coming to an end," Collen said in a statement.

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