Sunday Cardinal Couple - Swimming and Baskets

                         **********UPDATE********

Louisville women's basketball got off to a superb start today and rolled past Marquette to advance to the NCAA women's Sweet Sixteen. The Cards were led by Myisha Hines-Allen's 24 points and had four in double figures. We'll have much more on this in our Monday morning Cardinal Couple article....Louisville outscored the Golden Eagles 60 to 36 in the paint and shot 63.5% from the floor.

March Madness

We're introducing another sport here at Cardinal Couple, Underwater Basket Weaving...

No?  Oh, we're highlighting Basketball, and Swimming & Diving...separately?  OK.

Basketball

Let's start with Basketball.  Our bracketmeister, Jared, gave us some updates on the progress of the pick 'em tournament in the comments yesterday (by way of Paulie)...my name wasn't even on the list of the top 8 brackets.  Ah well.

The men's bracket is truly living up to the March Madness moniker, with upsets galore.  We honored the UMBC Retrievers and their historic win, as a 16 seed, over 1 seed Virginia.  Last night, the Loyola-Chicago Gryffindors...oh, Ramblers?...sorry, the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers beat Tennessee to advance to the sweet 16.  The maddest thing you could really find on the women's side was UConn's 94-31 score over St. Francis.  And, now, before you say that's, while certainly a blow-out, not totally mad as a score...that was at halftime.  Final score, 140-52.

Today, our Cardinals will be taking on Marquette after the Golden Eagles advanced over Dayton Friday afternoon.  We had plenty of discussion of this match on the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour, and our guest Mike Gilpatrick was able to feed all kinds of awesome stats about Marquette's game against Dayton to help give us a feel for what to expect.  The basic takeaway?  Watch out for #11 Alazzia Blockton and #5 Natisha Hiedeman.

Marquette lists a 4-guard lineup on their site as probable starters so look for MHA, Sam Fuehring, Kylee Shook, and Bionca Dunham to have a field day in the paint.

Game tip is at noon and is on ESPN2.  I believe this may be the only noon tip-off today, so coverage should stay on this game pretty consistently.

Swimming & Diving

We devote quite a bit of coverage to our Swimming & Diving team, certainly more than any other media outlet out there, but still probably not as much as they deserve in their meteoric rise to national prominence as a Swim&Dive program.

Head Coach Arthur Albiero has built a program that used to practice and compete in a run-down pool in the basement of Crawford Gym - a building that doesn't even exist anymore because it became too run down - into a team that regularly competes at the top levels of NCAA Swimming and Diving, with individual competitors competing and winning on the International Stage.

The NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Championship wrapped up yesterday and UofL finished with a school best 5th place finish.  Mallory Comerford, in a result that will surprise absolutely no one, repeated as the 200 yard freestyle champion, marking the 7th consecutive year that UofL Swimming and Diving has had at least one NCAA National Champion.

Underscoring the progression of this program, they set 7 school records at the meet, Comerford with 2 of them, in the 200 free, and the 100 free.  Her 200 free time of 1:39.80 makes her only the 2nd woman in history to break the 1:40 time and is the 2nd fastest swim ever in that event.  Alina Kendzior in the 100 back, Rachael Bradford-Feldman in the 200 IM, and the relay teams for 800 Free, 400 Medley, and 400 Free, all set school record marks.

One note that I found interesting, Comerford's split in the 800 Free relay was 1:39.14, also under that 1:40 mark, but an unofficial result, so it doesn't go in the record book.  Of more interest, though is that this split bested her standalone time of 1:39.80.  Will she take the top overall spot in the 200 Free event next year (she's only a junior this year)?  I wouldn't be surprised.

Softball

Colonel Mike Ferguson threw out the first pitch
to his daughter, Caitlin Ferguson

Softball continued their series against Notre Dame yesterday, but went down to defeat 3-1.

The lone Cardinals score came in the 6th inning when Megan Hensley doubled, Caitlin Barber entered to pinch run and made it home on a Nicole Pufahl hit to narrow the lead to the final 3-1 score.

Contrast this game to Friday's scorefest, and you have to like what UofL did to shut down the Notre Dame scoring machine.  If the Cardinals can string together some consistent offense, they could develop into a contender this year.

Lacrosse

Lacrosse led 5-3 at the half over a very good Boston College team, but the wheels came off in the 2nd half as the Eagles got everything in gear and cruised to a 19-10 victory.

Hat tricks for Julia Wood and Tessa Chad, Madison Hoover picked up a pair, and Caroline Blalock and Emily Howell each found the back of the net once.

The Lacrosse squad steps out of conference for a trip next weekend to Robert Morris.

Paulie spoke to Scott Teeter after the contest. Hear it here:

Teeter post-game vs. Boston College

The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

Speaking of March Madness, Paulie, Jared, myself, and guest Mike Gilpatrick were in the studio yesterday for our weekly romp of dubious sanity that is the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour.

I believe we set a record on getting through the scheduling and twitter segment as we had a lot to talk about.

We played the UMBC fight song three times. After all, we are on a station that does feature a lot of music.

Hear it hear: https://www.facebook.com/WCHQfm/videos/1969274029762537/


JMcA