Field Hockey Wraps, Volleyball Continues

Field Hockey Wraps the Season

Hanging around in California generally sounds like a pretty good way to spend a weekend, though I'm sure the Field Hockey squad would've enjoyed the weekend a bit more if they had started it off with a win, but what's done is done, and the team has one more game to finish out their regular season play.

The flock will match up against UC Davis today at 2pm EST, 11am PST.  Live video appears to be available a site called America East TV.  The link provided: https://americaeast.com/watch/default.aspx?Live=16209&path=conf

This game will have no bearing on the conference tournament prospect for UofL, of course, so the Cards' prospects of even playing in the ACC tournament at all are in the hands of other teams.

NCAA tournament play for the Cards seems like it's out of reach this year.  The NCAA tournament is an 18 team tournament, and with an RPI of 26, the prospects are dim.

So today will be a game for pride, for development of players and experience, and looking ahead to next year.

Volleyball

After an epic (it was over three hours long) five set loss to rival Pitt on Friday, the VolleyCards are really looking for a win today against 12th ranked SMU at 1pm EST, 2pm CST.

DBK and the squad, while taking things one game at a time, are really looking to hang on to that four seed in the NCAA tournament in order to ensure a whole tournament run at the KFC Yum! Center.

SMU is a team that kinda came out of nowhere this year, but they are heavy-laden with graduate students and seniors that won't be returning next year, so this is sort of a "one shot" deal for them this season.

The Cards will likely not be heavily punished for the loss at Pitt on Friday.  The team played well, and the outcome was certainly competitive.  Given that the match was against the number one team in the country and the Cards were the first team to win even a single set against Pitt in Pittsburgh (Pitt's previous set losses were one to Boston College in Chestnut Hill, and two to SMU in Dallas), polling is not likely to drop the Cards much, if at all if they win today over SMU.

For tournament seeding purposes, generally the NCAA committee looks more closely at the RPI, where Louisville is officially still in 1st (the more real time figstats site shows Nebraska eeking out a tiny advantage for 1st place today).

This may be considered one of the toughest weekends of the season for teams in the ACC, to play against Pitt and SMU in one weekend thanks to the ACC travel partner system.  Louisville will have hopefully gotten some good rest last night and looking to come into today's game strong.  As always, blocking will be one of the keys for the Cards, it really does drive the whole complexion of the team, leading to more floor defense, in-system offense and spreading the offense.  Otherwise, they need to minimize the errors and they should be able to beat the Mustangs, though it won't be easy.

This match is getting highlighted treatment today as it was "flexed" up onto the main ESPN flagship channel for the 1pm EST slot.  So lots of eyes will be on the teams this afternoon.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

As Case mentioned yesterday, the CCRHP crew was scattered to the four winds yesterday, so there was no opportunity to get together for the CCRHP recording.

We should be back next week, with our normal antics.

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JMcA