Tuesday Cardinal Couple - Shoni Picked 8th...Nita and Asia selected also in WNBA Draft

TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

JEFF MCADAMS BRINGS US WNBA, LACROSSE, TENNIS AND SOFTBALL NEWS IN THE TUESDAY EDITION OF CARDINAL COUPLE

 

Shoni Schimmel Going to Atlanta

In what may be nearly a dream, if you'll pardon the pun, for Louisville Women's Basketball fans, Shoni Schimmel was picked eighth in the WNBA draft by the Atlanta Dream.  She will be...barring trades...playing with another Louisville great, Angel McCoughtry.

Nita Slaughter was selected in the third round...35th. overall by the Los Angeles Sparks. The final pick of the draft was Asia Taylor...the Columbus native was 36th and is headed to the Minnesota Lynx.

With two of the Louisville Women's Basketball greats playing for the Dream, what are the best opportunities to see them play?  The closest WNBA franchise to Louisville is the Indiana Fever.  The Dream will be playing in Indianapolis at the Banker's Life Fieldhouse, the home court of the Fever, on Saturday May 17th at 7pm, Sunday June 29th at 6pm, and Saturday July 12th at 7pm.  For our Oregon readers, the closest franchise would be Seattle.  There is only one Dream game this season in Seattle on Thursday August 7th at 7pm (PDT).

Tickets are (at the time of this writing) readily available for the first game at Banker's Life starting at $30 and topping out at $76.95 (halfcourt, 6th row).

Previous University of Louisville WNBA Draft Picks:  2009 WNBA Draft – Angel McCoughtry (1^st Pick, Atlanta Dream); Candyce Bingham (39^th Pick, San Antonio Silver Stars); 2003 WNBA Draft - Lori Nero (19^th Pick, Houston Comets); 2000 WNBA Draft – Jill Morton (34^th Pick, Charlotte Sting).

Tennis Seeded 4th

Earning a 4th seed in The American Conference Tennis championship means that Louisville gets a
first round bye and won't play until Friday the 18th.  The doubles matches will start at noon against Rutgers.

With Tennis scheduling being a bit odd, the Cardinals only had three conference matches all season, but we did indeed play Rutgers for one of them.  On February 21st, UofL beat Rutgers 6-1, taking all three doubles matches and winning all but one of the singles matches in the convincing win.

Assuming we defeat Rutgers, we will match up with the winner of match 3 which will be Houston, Cincinnati, or UConn.  Houston is the number 1 seed in the tournament and receives the bye to play the winner of the first round match between 8 seed Cincinnati and 9 seed UConn.

Lacrosse Polls

Despite two very good wins this week in Philadelphia vs Temple and Villanova, Louisville Lacrosse didn't advance in the polls.  To be fair, though, even at 19th, Louisville is getting into the rarefied air of the Lacrosse world with Albany, Virginia, and Penn State being the next three teams ahead of the Cards.

The current polls do a great job of showing just how tough the competition in the ACC next year will be, with the top three spots, as well as sixth, eighth, tenth and 17th all being held by current ACC schools.  The top spot is held by current ACC school Maryland, but of course they will be moving on to the Big 10 next year.

Softball Picking up Steam

With some good wins of late, Softball seems to be picking up some steam.

 No Louisville players picked up player of the week honors this week, but freshman pitcher Maryssa Becker, and senior second baseman Katie Keller continue to get attention from the conference office by making the honor roll.

Maryssa Becker picked up two wins in the circle.  Katie Keller batted .600 in the four games UofL played this week, while also having a .532 on-base percentage.

The Cards take a road trip to Orlando this weekend for AAC Conference action.

jeffmcadams