Cards Beat the Cats...Again, and WBB - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Cards Beat the Cats...Again

It hasn't been a total academic year sweep for the Cards over the Cats, Kentucky did get the wins in the two "biggest" sports, football and, unsurprisingly, Men's Basketball, but otherwise, the Cards are generally coming out on top of the Cats when they meet this year.

The two teams didn't compete in women's soccer this year, but the men did get the dub over the Cats.  Volleyball is the other traditional fall meeting, where DBK's squad swept UK all the way back down I-64.

The latest edition of the Cards' overall dominance over the Cats came yesterday in the Ralph Wright Natatorium, where both the men and women earned solid wins over UK.

Both of the Cards teams won by substantial overall margins, 210-90 for the women, and 209.5-88.5 for the men.

Highlights include the 200 medley relay where the Cards entered two teams, and they came in first and second.  The top finishing team included Karoline Bennett, Ella Welch, Christiana Regenauer, and Gabi Albiero and just barely missed making an A cut time.  The 200 individual freestyle also had two Cards in the top two spots, as Summer Cardwell touched first, just edging out teammate Fernanda Celidonio.

Paige Hetrick topped the podium in the 100 backstroke with a B cut qualifying time.  Teammate Ally Boynton took second.  Ella Welch won the breaststroke, but UK managed to get the second spot in this one.

Stop me if you've heard this before with UofL Women's Swimming...the 200 Butterfly.  Yes, following in the...footsteps?  splashlanes?...of Kelsey Dahlia (nee Worrell), and Mallory Comerford, the latest UofL fly great, which to be fair we've talking about for a few years now already, is Gabi Albiero, beating the rest of the field yesterday by three seconds.

A full sweep for UofL in the 50 freestyle, and wow if you've never seen one of these events in person, it's crazy intense being just a single lap up and back in the pool.  And since NCAA still works in yards for their events, it's even quicker than International 50's which are measured in meters, adding almost another 15 feet to the event.  Christina Regenauer topped the podium, joined by Julia Dennis and Karoline Barrett.

Lindsay Gizzi, fresh off her spring sports media day appearance won the three meter springboard in diving, part of an ongoing surge in the Cards' diving prowess.

Back to the long pool, UofL dominated even more in the 100 freestyle, filling the podium for points, and just to add insult to injury took 4th with an exhibition swimmer.  Christina Regenauer, Julia Dennis, and Lucy Mehreban scored points, with Ella Welch taking that 4th place spot as an exhibition swimmer.

Kim Herkle won the 200 breaststroke.  Summer Cardwell took the 500 free by an easy four seconds over teammate Maddie Luther.

Another full podium of Cards for the 100 butterfly, yup, Gabi Albiero on top, joined by Christina Regenauer and Karoline Barrett.  The swimmers in the 200 Individual Medley pulled a, "yeah, well how about this", filling the top four spots all with Cardinals.  Fernanda Celidonio, Kim Herkle, and Tristan Ulett kept Maddie Hall off the official podium, but all were no doubt celebrating together.

And, to cap it all off, the 400 freestyle relay was also taken 1-2 by the Cards A and B teams.  Gabi Albiero, Julia Dennis, Lucy Mehreban, and Ella Welch made up the winning A team, with Bianca Costea, Karoline Barrett, Fernanda Celidonio, Tristen Ulett comprising the 2nd place B team.

Really a great win for the Cards over the Cats to extend the UofL success in the rivalry for the year.  Baseball and Softball will be final meetings between the two schools.  Softball only plays the Cats once this year, here at Ulmer, but Baseball will play a home and home with one game each in Louisville and Lexington.

WBB Hosts Pitt

Pitt joins the Cardinals for a game at 2pm today at the KFC Yum! Center.  They'll be looking to build on their success Thursday where they beat Virginia.

Pitt didn't exactly schedule a barn burner of a non-conference schedule, but even as such, they finished just barely sub-.500 before diving into the harder ACC schedule where they lost six before getting the four point win over UVA.

You can never take a day off in the ACC, but hopefully today will be a day for the Cards to concentrate on some of the uneven parts of their game and improve.

The Cards did, of course, win the first matchup of the year against Pitt, and you would be forgiven, if you just looked at the final score and thought it was an easy win for UofL.  However most of the 30 point margin of victory came by outscoring Pitt 26-6 in the fourth quarter.

The main threat from the Panthers is Liatu King.  She's not an outside shooting threat, not having taken a single three point shot all year, but she does hit over 55% of the shots she takes from elsewhere on the floor.  She averages 19.5 points per game and maybe even more impressively, over 10 rebounds per game.  If the Cards can block her out from the boards, and mostly keep Pitt to single-shot possessions, that will go a long way towards securing the victory.

It is a 2pm start, as mentioned above.  If you can't make it to the KFC Yum! Center, coverage is on ACC Network Extra where you'll get Jeff Grier on play by play, and Jessica McDaniel (or as we mostly remember her, Jess Laemmle - Attack Yorkie).  As always, you have the option of hearing Nick Curran verbally paint the picture of the game on 93.9FM, with the non Attack Yorkie but still great Cardinal Alumna Cortnee Walton on color.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

Jared chose to go do photos for the Men's Basketball game against Virginia, so he wasn't on the CCRHP call yesterday.  Paulie is still out on the IR list, but continuing to recover with the help of our ongoing well wishes.  That left Case, Daryl, and myself on the call.

We gave quite a bit of time to WBB, as is typical this time of year, but we did get a nice recap from Case of the Spring Sports Media Day.

I do have a correction from my "Final Thoughts".  I claimed that no home team had won a match in the Pro Volleyball Federation league yet (there are only three matches in to the season, so it's not that crazy), but in fact the Thursday match between the Grand Rapid Rise, and the Columbus Fury was in Grand Rapid, rather than Columbus as I had thought.  GR did get the win in a sweep powered largely by Claire Chaussee's whopping 21 kills.  Were still looking for a four set win in the league, though, as we've had the above sweep, and a pair of five setters.

Check out the podcast at it's anchor.fm/spotify home at:

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cardinal-couple/episodes/UofL-Drops-First-Conference-Game-e2f0t9h

-- 

JMcA

Welcome Home ! -- WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 CORTNEE WALTON BACK IN LOUISVILLE

Jeff Walz and Louisville women's basketball brought #13 home. 

Cortnee Walton returns to Louisville after spending three years working in recruiting operations down at Georgia Tech. Here at Louisville, she'll be Director of Player Development and Alumni Relations. You can expect she'll work closely with Adrienne Johnson, who is now the assistant AD for women's basketball, but had tons of experience doing what Cortnee will do in her 17 years (so far) at UofL. 

I did a "double take" when I realized "A.J." has been at Louisville for 17 years. I'm firmly convinced she must have started working for the Cards when she was 13. 

(My favorite picture of two of my favorite players in Louisville WBB history  A-Tayy and Cort ) 

Cortnee,was a sideline reporter for the ACC Network in basketball and soccer and did radio after graduation and before she went to Georgia Tech. Oh, yeah...did I mention she played a little hoops before that here at Louisville? 

All in all, she played in 139 games for the Cards and started in all 34 in the 2015-16 season. She was the only Card to start in all 34 games. She and Myshia Hines-Allen were a pretty dynamic front-line for Walz, That team got knocked out of the NCAA Tournament in the second round by DePaul. And,  in 2016-17,  she started 30 of the 31 UofL WBB games on a team that made it to the third round of the NCAA Tournament before losing to Baylor at Baylor.

She was also a freshman on the 2012-13 squad that upset Baylor... and Brit Griner..  at Baylor in the third round of the NCAA Tournament and made it to the finals...but they lost to UConn. That squad had Asia Taylor, Monique Reid, both Schimmels, Tia Gibbs, Shawnta Dyer and Sherrone Vails. ...and that's not even half the roster. 

I think you can safely say that Cortnee has seen some pretty memorable women's basketball through the years. 

She has the personality, intelligence and skills to do well in her new job at UofL WBB. She'll have no trouble reaching out to alumni and talking with them. Director of Player Development will suit her skills well, too. She's seen a lot in her time around college basketball, is well equipped to handle just about any situation and will give you her ear and time to talk and listen and help anyway she can. 

I remember seeing her at the ACC women's tournament in reensboro when she was in her first year at Georgia Tech. We talked for awhile, exchanged a few memories and had some laughs but what I remember most is her plaintively looking at me and telling me that it was her dream to get back to Louisville and work for the Cardinals WBB program someday. 

Dreams do come true. If you believe it, you can acheive it. 

There are a few new faces in the WBB staffing these days in addition to Cortnee. Shay Robinson is an associate coach now. Macey Ford takes over as director of operations. Denny Crum Hall is being built on Floyd Street across from the Planet Fitness Kueber Center (I'll probably refer to it at the "little YUM" until I go senile, though,)  People move onward and upward in successful organizational structures  and UofL WBB is a prime example. 

Yes, the days of dropping by Sam Purcell's office and leaving him a few ink pens that no longer work or had any ink in them are gone. (I'll explain that prank someday to you readers)

 And, I'll be wandering down to the facility before too long to see Walz and company (if new WBB SID Matt Paras can make it happen), No more teasing Beth Burns about bombing out twice at San Diego St. or pestering Kate Tucker about getting basketballs autographed. It's a tribute to Walz that his staff is in high demand. When the people you've trained in your system advance in their careers, it means they've had great teachers. Come home, Cortnee and learn from Jeff and Steph.  

Things change. And in the words of the old REO Speedwagon song...you gotta roll with the changes. This a good change and will benefit both Cortmee and UofL women's basketball.  

LINK to song:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeHkaSH0Xw8

paulie

 

Gameday in Atlanta - Sunday Cardinal Couple

 WBB vs 16th Ranked Georgia Tech

As Case's "Year of New", apparently we're trying some new formatting options here on Cardinal Couple, notably center justification*, so let's do this new thing.

The hoop squad is in Atlanta getting ready to take on the Yellowjackets of Georgia Tech.  Nell Fortner is in her third season as head coach.  She has assembled a high powered staff of women with Tasha Butts as Associate Head Coach; Blanche Alverson and Murial Page as Assistants; Mickie DeMoss, who has helmed the Florida and Kentucky teams during her career, as Chief of Staff; Louisville alum, and Cardinal Couple favorite Cortnee Walton doing recruiting operations; and more.

(* OK, nope, I can't do the center justification thing for a whole article.)

The Yellowjackets are 10-2 on the season so far with a win against Wake Forest in their only conference game thus far.  A second conference game, scheduled against Pitt on Thursday, was postponed due to Covid issues in the Pitt squad.  Their losses aren't terrible, falling by eight points to Auburn and by only a single point to Purdue.  Both games were low scoring affairs with scores in the 50s.

Not many signature wins for GT in the season at this point, though I'm sure they're happy with the rivalry win over Georgia.  Oh yeah, and the 13 point margin over UConn is sure to get a lot of attention.

The Techsters, much like UofL so far this season, have shown off on the defensive side of the ball.  They've forced almost 20 more turnovers from their opponents and have chalked up more than 10 more steals than their opponents so far in the season.  They get about four rebounds for every three their opponents get.

On offense, things get a bit fuzzier for GT.  Only one player has a free throw average that would earn them an "F" in the Fred report, Lotta-Maj Lahtinen (5'9" senior), who's 20-28.  Loyal McQueen is listed on the season stats as hitting two for two, but she transferred in mid-December to Alabama.

Top scorers overall on the squad are Eylia Love (6'1" sophomore) and Nerea Hermosa (6'5" junior).  Neither are particular threats from beyond the arc, though when Love takes them, she hits them at a 52.6% clip.  Hermosa hasn't even attempted a three this season at all.

From range, watch out for Lahtinen, Digna Strautmane (6'2" super senior), and Lorela Cubaj (6'4" super senior).  Avyonce Carter (5'10" sophomore) is also a three point threat coming off the bench.  Lahtinen and Cubaj are the main distributors with 46 and 58 assists respectively.

With both teams being primarily driven by defense, look for a scrappy messy game.  Look for transition offense resulting from aggressive defensive plays, and a well coached game between two high quality coaches.

McCamish Pavilion is the location for this game, with a noon start on ACC Network, so you can find it on ESPN's streaming, or on linear TV.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

The CCRHP is still on winter/holiday hiatus, but should be back next week, where we'll try to catch up on all the Basketball action of the previous three weeks and preview a bit of the Miami and Syracuse games.

We hope to start the new year off with a bang, and hope you'll join us.

New Rankings — Dana’s Accolades — TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 New Rankings

Despite a pair of victories, Louisville women’s basketball fell from the #1 ranking. We all suspected it would happen following their loss to #4 NC State. Thankfully, the Cards only dropped a couple spots down to #3 in the AP Poll, but did not receive any first place votes.

South Carolina retook the top spot for the second time this year with all but one of the first place votes. UConn sat closely behind in the second spot. Coincidentally, those two squads played last night, which we will get to later on.

NC State retained their #4 ranking and received the only other first place vote. The Wolfpack made a strong case for a higher position before getting upset by North Carolina on Sunday.

Stanford, Texas A&M, and Baylor each moved up one spot for the #5, #6, and #7 positions, respectively. UCLA dropped down to #8 following a loss. Maryland and Arizona flip flopped with the Terps moving to #9 and the Wildcats slipping to #10.

We still haven’t seen any other ACC teams make the Top 25, but several teams are within striking distance. Syracuse, Georgia Tech, and Virginia Tech all received votes.

Including tonight’s games, there’s 26 days left in the regular season. In a normal year, this is where rankings become more and more important as teams fight for the top four seeds in each region and home court advantage. With the entire tournament being held in a semi-central location, there is no home court advantage, but there is still plenty of bragging rights.

So now let’s backtrack to last night’s prime time game. South Carolina visited UConn for a 7:00 p.m., top-off. It was a poor shooting night for both teams and their three-point shooting would scare even the bravest people in a haunted house.

Regulation wasn’t enough excitement for this game so we added overtime to keep people on the edges of their seats a wee bit longer. The Huskies came out with a 63-59 victory in a game where the largest lead was seven points.

Conference Breakdown

ACC	W-L	GB	PCT	W-L	PCT	STRK
#3 Louisville	11-1	--	.917	18-1	.947	W2
#4 NC State	7-2	2.5	.778	12-2	.857	L1
Georgia Tech	9-3	2	.750	11-4	.733	L1
Syracuse	8-4	3	.667	11-4	.733	W2
Notre Dame	6-6	5	.500	8-8	.500	L3
Florida State	5-5	5	.500	6-5	.545	L1
Wake Forest	6-7	5.5	.462	9-8	.529	W1
Clemson	5-7	6	.417	10-7	.588	L1
Miami	5-7	6	.417	8-7	.533	W1
Virginia Tech	5-7	6	.417	10-7	.588	W3
North Carolina	4-8	7	.333	9-8	.529	W1
Pittsburgh	2-6	7	.250	4-7	.364	L3
Boston College	1-8	8.5	.111	5-8	.385	L4
Duke	0-1	5.5	.000	3-1	.750	L1
Virginia	0-2	6	.000	0-5	.000	L5

As Paulie mentioned yesterday, Louisville holds a 2.5 game lead over NC State in the conference standings. The Cards have five games remaining. Mrs. Wuf’s squad has six games left.

So what’s the mean for the Cards? Well, it’s simple. Louisville controls their own destiny. If they win out, the ACC title is theirs. In fact, they can still afford to lose another game (preferably not) and would still have more ACC wins and ACC win percentage than NC State to take the title.

Here’s where things get weird. Georgia Tech is only two games behind with their 9-3 record, but they have the third best win percentage (.750). Syracuse (8-4) is only three games behind and is fourth in win percentage. From there, everyone else sits at five games behind or further.

With four of the five games remaining being against the top six ACC teams, the Cards could actually finish as low as sixth. Let’s hope they don’t crash and burn though.

Dana’s Accolades

Just hand her the Player of the Year title. At this point there is no one you can’t put over the senior from Gary, Ind. I know, South Carolina's Boston is getting chatter and freshman Paige Bueckers at UConn hs been on fire lately, but Dana delivers each and every night -- unflappable, intense, and "the one" that anyone the Cards play probably has at the top of their scouting list -- maybe with the sentence:

"How do you stop #1"  

Rightfully so, Dana Evans was named both the ACC and ESPNW Player of the Week .yesterday.

In the three games last week, Evans averaged 26.3 points per game, 3.7 assists per game, and 3.0 rebounds per game while playing almost every single minute. She shot higher than 40% from both the floor and three-point range.  The only downside to Dana’s week was her 43-straight made free throws coming to an end. She is shooting .933 from the charity stripe this season.

Dana now has 36 straight games with double-digit points. That ties for the longest streak by a UofL women’s basketball player over the last two decades. Her partner in crime up there? Just someone named Angel McCoughtry. That’s darn good company to be in.

Thursday will be Senior Day with Dana being the only current player on the roster being recognized. We all have one final game to see Dana step onto Denny Crum Court. Georgia Tech comes to call, which means former Card great Cortnee Walton will be back in the KFC YUM! Center, handling her duties as recruiting operations director (we assume...we'll look for her). 

Today is Cortnee's birthday, by the way, so send her a "Happy Birthday" tweet at @cortneewalton

Rough Weather

FROM THE CARDINAL COUPLE WEATHER CENTER, PSUEDO-METEOROROLOGIST JARED ANDERSON REPORTS : The next several days have an ugly forecast. We will see temperatures as low as zero degrees on top of potential freezing rain and ice. This may not be drastic news to some of you, especially north of Louisville -- but...here, it's newsworthy. 

We care about all of our readers and contributors here at Cardinal Couple. Please take whatever precautions you may need to handle the upcoming weather. We now return you to our regularly scheduled program :  "The Perils of Paulie trying to figure out the Internet." 

Happy Tuesday and Go Cards!

Jared

Football, Volleyball and More -- Sunday Cardinal Couple

Football

Let's start on an upbeat note, shall we?  At least mostly upbeat.  Football, in their season opener did knock off Purdue up at Lucas Oil Stadium by a score of 35-28.  This victory is diminished slightly by some bad ball security, and a shocking number of penalties.  As I saw someone say on Twitter this morning, an ugly win is better than a pretty loss, so we'll take it, learn from it, and move on.

Credit to Purdue for keeping it close and forcing the Cards to score the last 10 points of the night to win this one. And, once again, Lamar Jackson shows why he is the reigning Heisman trophy winner with a huge performance in Indy.

485 Total Yards for LJ8...which was over 100 more than the entire Purdue team managed. 

Volleyball

Kent State

Volleyball had two matches yesterday in The Cardinal Classic.  The first, in the early afternoon was
against Kent State.  KSU was clearly the outclassed team all weekend, but they were a fun team to watch, mostly because they scrambled a lot, and did a pretty good job of it.  With the result is that they kept all of the games surprisingly close in score, though I don't think they won a set all weekend.  The Cards won, in straight sets, 25-14, 25-17, 25-19.

A slight change to the starting lineup in this one, with Piper Roe starting in place of Maggie DeJong.  Unofficial word that I heard is that she pulled an abdominal muscle in warmups for the Kent State match, very minor, and she saw action again in the evening matchup.  Piper made the best of her opportunity, putting down 7 kills on 9 attempts, for an absolutely eye-popping .778.  Melanie McHenry and Tess Clark again formed the third leg of the offensive stool, both hitting .318.  Melanie got 8 kills on 22 attempts, and Tess got 10 on 22 attempts, just with two more hitting errors than McHenry (3 vs 1).  Megan Sloan made an appearance in this match, and also took advantage of her opportunity with 5 kills on 10 attempts in only 2 sets played.

Defense was mostly by committee, though Piper did contribute well in blocking as well, with a solo and four shares, nearly half of the team's total of 7.  Digs were pretty evenly distributed, with Wilma Rivera getting the most at 13 as opponents continue to target her to try to take her out of her setting duties.  The two dynamic duos in the back row, Molly Sauer, and Gabbie Wiley, along with Molly and freshman Alexis Hamilton accounted for a total of 18, (7 for Molly, 9 for Gabbie, and 6 for Alexis).  The 6'2" McHenry continues to show her versatility in all-rotation play by also picking up 6.

Overall a good outing, and then evening came.

Illinois

Illinois came in to form the marquee matchup of The Cardinal Classic.  An (honestly, surprising to me) unranked Illinois team came in and showed that, despite having a new coach (probably a big part of why they were unranked to start the season) they haven't dropped a beat.  The Cards were looking for revenge for the elimination from the NCAA tournament in 2015, also in Cardinal Arena, but it wasn't to be.  Illinois came away with the win, 25-18, 25-15, 25-20.

Full credit to Illinois, who is still a very fine team, that never gave up on a ball, and with size and power that the Cardinals just couldn't match.  While Louisville was getting a lot of deflections and tips at the net, they just didn't have the size and height to get solid blocks, with only three total for the match.

UofL struggled to remain in system, and just didn't play very sharp.  I have no doubt that the team will be looking at plenty of film from this one, to find their mistakes and ways to improve.  One of Coach Busboom Kelly's saying comes into play, here, "Win, or learn."  There will be lot's to learn from in this one.

The Wide Netters head back out on the road next, with a trip out west to Vegas, for the UNLV Challenge.  There, they'll meet up with UC Irvine, Weber State, and of course host UNLV.  From what I've seen of this Cards team, and despite knowing precious little about these opponents, I do expect UofL to come out of this weekend with three more in the win column.

Don't give up on this team.  They may be only 2-3 in their record at this point, but those three losses are to ranked teams and a team that should be ranked, and probably will be in tomorrow's poll.  Also, in that win column is a win over a ranked team.  I would stand up UofL's strength of schedule to this point against any team in the country.  There are good things ahead, here.

Field Hockey

Sowry's squad looks to get back to the winning ways today at noon, where they also take on the Kent State Golden Flashes.  Let's hope the Field Hockey squad has as much success against them as the Volleyball team did, and help set a pattern for the Football team to follow three weeks from now when they tangle with Kent State here in Louisville.

Field Hockey is on the road for this one, in Columbus OH.  They'll be coming out angry after taking the loss to Ohio State, Friday.  No video or audio of this one, that we're aware of.

The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

The latest episode of The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour is up on the soundcloud, and my snarkerator was a finely tuned machine yesterday.  We had audio from Dani Busboom Kelly after the volleyball win over WKU Friday, and had a wonderful live chat by phone with Cortnee Walton in our Catching Up series.  One takeaway from that, be sure to listen for her on the call a number of ACC Network Extra events this year.  Otherwise, we did touch, at least briefly, on all of the various sports competing...things get busy in the fall.  Check it out, won't you?

https://soundcloud.com/chradio/cardinal-couple-20170902

-- JMcA