Rob Bennett Joins Golf Coaching Staff -- THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Between the lack of news among UofL sports and my focus and attention having been entirely on the Olympics, today's article will be rather short and sweet.

As we have seen all throughout the first week in the Olympics, Team USA continues to be in contention for the gold medal race and overall medal race, but Japan and China continue to be thorns for the Americans.

The big news in the Olympics continues to be centered on Simone Biles and the Norwegian Beach Handball Team. The two topics are unrelated. I'll save my thoughts for Saturday's radio-podcast, which can be heard live through YouTube, but I do stand in support of both Biles and Norway.

Rob Bennett Joins Golf Coaching Staff

UofL women's golf announced that Rob Bennett will join the team as an assistant coach. Bennett comes to Louisville after spending the last three seasons with Abilene Christian.

"We're excited to welcome Coach Rob Bennett to our coaching staff," said head coach Whitney Young. "His vision, passion, and experience will help us continue taking steps towards future success. We look forward to him making a positive impact on our student-athletes with his dedication, work ethic, and competitive nature."

During his time with Abilene Christian, the Wildcats rose over 60 spots in the national rankings. ACU set school records in scoring average, low single round score, and low tournament score under Bennett's guidance.

UofL women's golf is no stranger to the national rankings and competing in the postseason. Bennett could be the key into helping Coach Young continue to build this program and advance them further.

Daryl is out for our Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast this weekend, but is expected to have tomorrow's write so tune in. Like myself, she has been following all sorts of Olympics happenings when she's not pushing buttons and running the camera crew at Louisville Slugger Field.

Happy Friday and Go Cards!

Jared

Olympics -- Lacrosse Accolades -- TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 Has the exhaustion of watching or following the Olympics hit you yet? I've been trying to follow as much as I can which has included some late nights and, on the weekends, early mornings.

As of yesterday, Team USA was doing alright. Swimming typically brings in a lot of medals and they've contributed to a heavy amount of the then-14 medals (seven gold, three silver, four bronze). Team USA was second officially (the Olympics goes based off number of gold) with Japan having eight gold medals and China with six. In total medals, Team USA sat second with 14, but China had a slight lead with 18.

Here is the breakdown of the 14 medals as of yesterday afternoon Eastern Time:

Fencing: 1 gold

Shooting: 3 gold

Taekwondo: 1 gold

Skateboarding: 1 bronze

Swimming: 2 gold, 3 silver, 3 bronze

Note: Team USA had earned other medals before I had gone to bed, but to prevent confusion, it was easier to give the medal count from the end of Monday July 26.

Softball will earn either a gold or silver in their 7:00 A.M. ET game today. Swimming still has plenty more to go with a plethora of Americans competing. USA women's basketball faced Nigeria at 12:30 this morning in group play so hopefully Paulie can give us an update on that. Team USA continues group play in beach volleyball. Gymnastics has plenty of Americans ready to vie for a medal. Women's soccer concluded group play early this morning against Australia.

Oh yeah, that's not even half of the sports Team USA is competing in today. However, we have some UofL news to cover.

Lacrosse Accolades

Scott Teeter continues to build his program and some of his latest talented recruits earned some nice honors. Five incoming Louisville lacrosse players earned USA Lacrosse Girls' High School awards.

Bri Lang, Haley Reeck, and Marley Scott were named All-Americans. Lauren Figas was named the Jackie Pitts Award winner for Florida- South Atlantic Region. Tiffany Natoli joined Scott as being named Academic All-Americans.

Lang helped lead her high school to 2019 and 2021 Section Championships. A Section is similar to a District, for the Louisville area folks. Scott helped led her team to State Championships in 2018, 2019, and 2021. Reeck is a dual-sport athlete and was a team captain for lacrosse and soccer. Rigas helped her team to a State runner-up finish in 2019 and Section runner-up in 2021.

All five will be suited up in the spring for Teeter's squad and can help replace some important players that were recognized at Senior Day such as Caroline Blalock, Sarah Blalock, Ally Hall, Alex McNicholas, Shayla Scanlan, Maddie Birch, Jen Schaaf, Rachel Florek, and Allie Arcidiacono. A few of the recognized seniors have hinted at interest in returning next season with the extra year of eligibility.

The Cards finished the season ranked 24th in the country (out of 112 active teams) but failed to make the NCAA Tournament after a first-round exit to North Carolina in the ACC Tournament.

Lacrosse is not currently an Olympic sport but has appeared five times in the Olympics, most recently in 1948. With the sport rapidly growing interest there have been rumors it could join the Olympics as soon as 2024 or 2028.

Happy Tuesday and Go Cards!

Jared

Payton Verhulst U19 World Cup -- FRIDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Happy Friday, Cards fans! We have finally reached the end of the work week and now have the weekend to look forward to. Bright an early this morning the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremonies began.

We've barely scratched the surface of the Olympics and excitement continues to build. NBC and Peacock seem to be doing a majority of the streaming and coverage of events. I'm excited to see current and former Cards compete among different sports, but I'm also thrilled we have baseball and softball in the Olympics again. Cheerleading just got approved to become an Olympic sport effective the 2024 Olympics. That's something to look forward to in the future.

However, we do have some current UofL news involving women's basketball.

Payton Verhulst Participating in the U19 World Cup

Fans are eager to see Payton Verhulst in a Louisville uniform this winter, but the highly touted freshman has other business to take care of first.

Verhulst is one of 12 members that will play for the USA Basketball Women's U19 World Cup Team. They are currently training through July 27 before they head over to Europe.

The FIBA U19 World Cup will be held in Debrecen, Hungary from Aug. 7-19. Italy, Australia, and Egypt are all on the schedule so far for preliminary play.

Since 1985, Team USA has compiled a record of 86-13 in U19 play including eight gold medals, one silver, and one bronze. Let's hope they add a ninth gold medal.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

As of right now we are on for our Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast tomorrow. Daryl will be out, but I think the other four of us will be available. Our Cardinal Couple engineers Worldwide and Case have been working on setting us up using OBS as a replacement for Skype. OBS gives them more control on the audio settings and balance for each individual user.

Beyond the brief and simple explanation for the switch over you can check out the novel being written by our team of engineers on all of the benefits of OBS and how it will help us. Just don't ask me, I have a music degree.

Catch us at 11 a.m. Saturday ! Go to the Cardinal Couple You Tube page and click away. 

Happy Friday and Go Cards!

Jared

Random News and Notes -- THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 Happy Thursday, Cards fans! We've been switching writing assignments this week like musical chairs with Daryl and I taking some of the heavier labor with assistance from Case on Monday. Things still remain fairly quiet in terms of UofL news.

Many student-athletes have started making their way back to campus to begin training and conditioning. The commitment of being a DI student-athlete comes with much sacrifice including a condensed summer. I usually wake up at 6:40 to get ready for work and even many of these student-athletes have already been awake for quite some time for their morning workouts.

Katy and I had to plan out what was going to be on tv with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics having started. The lady of the house enjoys her time watching Big Brother and the Bachelor/Bachelorette (whichever is currently in season), but I gave her the talk that we'll be watching the Olympics on the big tv in the living room. Being the nice fiancé I am, I went out to buy an HDMI cable to hook up the second cable box to the tv in the bedroom so she could watch her show while I enjoy rooting for Team USA.

Courtesy of US Soccer

Speaking of the Olympics and Team USA, it was an ugly start for the Team USA women's soccer, who dropped their opening match in group play to Sweden 3-0. We do have to look at many of the members of the USWNT have been on the roster for the last two FIBA World Cups, if not longer, and may not have the same fresh legs as some of their opponents. Europe has really beefed up their women's soccer teams in recent years. But one loss doesn't knock them out.

Only 12 teams compete in the Olympics for women's soccer. There are three groups of four teams, labeled Group E, F, G. They received those three group names to avoid confusion with the men's Groups A-D. The top two finishes in each group advance to the next portion. The next top two finishers also advance, giving the next round a total of eight teams. Thankfully, Team USA still has Australia (ranked 9th in the FIBA rankings) and New Zealand (ranked 22nd). Sweden is currently ranked 6th with the Americans continuing to hold the top ranking.

Monica Abbott, courtesy of NCAA.com

Team USA softball also started the Olympics already. In fact, they're two games in already. In their opening game, Team USA (ranked 1st in the WBSC rankings) took down Italy (ranked 9th) 2-0. Then, at 8:00 p.m., ET, last night, the Americans went up against Canada (ranked 3rd). It was a close one as Team USA walked away with a 1-0 win.

Like the Team USA women's soccer, the softball squad features some veteran players. 38-year-old Cat Osterman and 35-year-old Monica Abbott are on the team this year. Both players pitched in the 2008 silver medal finish with Osterman also playing in the 2004 gold medal finish.

For softball, just six teams will compete in the Olympics this year: USA (ranked 1st), Japan (ranked 2nd), Canada (ranked 3rd), Mexico (ranked 5th), Australia (ranked 8th), and Italy (ranked 9th). The third and fourth place finishers in the round robin pool play compete in the bronze medal game will the top two finishers will battle it out for the gold.

I have no plans to stay up until 2:00 or 4:00 and I'm certainly not going to bed at 8:00 and trying to get up for some of the listed game times, but I will gladly watch games when and where I can.

Believe it or not, I have photographed MBB

On one last note and semi-tied to UofL, congratulations to former Card and current Bucks player Jordan Nwora on becoming a world champion as the Milwaukee Bucks won the NBA Finals Tuesday night.

Happy Thursday and Go Cards!

Jared