Softball Wins Awards and Begins ACC Tournament -- Women's Golf Finishes up Regional Play -- WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Softball Earns Three Conference Awards

Three Louisville softball players received recognition with ACC awards yesterday.  Pitcher Megan Hensley and shortstop Sidney Melton were named to the All-ACC first team and second baseman Maddy Newman was named to the All-ACC freshman team.

This is Hensley's second appearance on the All-ACC team after earning the honors in 2016.  She has played a crucial role on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.  However, she does prefer hitting over pitching and would step up to the plate if she could only choose one.  Melton makes her first appearance on the conference team.  She is perfect in stolen bases this year and has crossed the plate a team-high 19 times.  Newman filled in early in the season at second base and would not surrender that position.  She has had one of the top rookie

performances by a Louisville player since the university parted ways with the Big East.  All three players will be returning to Louisville's roster next season.

Florida State claimed a majority of the major awards by taking Player of the Year (Jessie Warren) Pitcher of the Year (Kylee Hanson), and Freshman of the Year (Sydney Sherrill).  Holly Aprile of Pittsburgh took home Coach of the Year.

Louisville Softball Begins ACC Tournament

Desperately needing something to draw the NCAA Tournament committee's eyes this direction the 8-seeded Louisville softball team hopes to make a run in the ACC Tournament.  The Cards bused to Atlanta yesterday and will face 9-seeded Syracuse in one of the play-in games.  The winner will face 1-seeded Florida State.

The Cards finished 10-12 in conference play this season, well below the coaches' preseason predictions of finishing fourth.  I thought they could finish as high as second or third, but the Cards never did piece everything together.

The Cards lead the all-time series with Syracuse 21-10 with most of those games being played when the two teams were conference rivals in the Big East.  This season the teams are 1-1 against each other this year after the third game of the series was canceled due to inclement weather.

Today's game is set for 1:00 p.m., and can be viewed online on Watch ESPN.  Hopefully we might see a local station such as Fox Sports South pick it up for tv viewing.

Women's Golf Enters Final Day of Play in Seventh

Enjoying the sun and beautiful weather out in San Francisco the women's golf team is sitting in a tie for seventh place and just one stroke out of sixth.  The Cards shot a 6-over-par 294 yesterday and are 5-over-par 581 throughout the whole event so far.

Lauren Hartlage and Delaney Shah both shot an even-par of 72 yesterday to lead the way.  Hartlage is tied for 12th overall and Shah sits in a tie for 38th.  Olivia Cason is tied for 29th after struggling in the second round.

The top six teams from each region advance to the NCAA Championships in Stillwater, O.K., so the Cards do have a little bit of work cut out for them.  Louisville will need to make up their one-stroke deficit and hopefully will pull ahead further from their own success or have North Carolina and Oklahoma State struggle on the final day of events.

A trip to the NCAA Championships would mark the program's second trip with the other coming in 2008.

What is Today?

Picture from the Hitchcock
classic "VERTIGO". 

If your kids are feeling energetic they can bike to school today.  It is also national school nurse day, and believe me, with what they deal with they deserve at least a week of recognition, especially with the Hep A outbreak going on around town.  For you film critics Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo premiered on this day in 1958.  We can also wish Billy Joel a happy birthday today.  I saw him start a fire one time, but I know no one will believe me.

With Minout "Minnie" Mink leaving UofL for good and returning home I was hoping to get a video interview with her before she left, but the filed hockey star procrastinated on packing a wee bit too much so we are in the works of an alternative.  Be on the lookouts to see what the Mink has to say about her time as a Cardinal and her time in the states as well as what her "walk-up" song would be. Probably not anything Billy Joel sang or wrote?

Happy Wednesday and Go Cards!

- Jared -

Spring Sports Galore -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Spring Events in Full Swing

Normally, on a Saturday morning in the spring, you'll find I've written about Friday evening's softball game. That's usually enough to get through an article, but it often puts the other sports in action to the side, not giving all of the women's sports we cover here the recognition they deserve. UofL has had a busy start to the weekend, in women's sports especially, so I figured that I would give a quick recognition to all of these teams as best as I could.

The aforementioned Louisville Softball team did play yesterday. They took on the Syracuse Orange twice, in fact. In the first game of the day, the Cards jumped on top with a 2 run lead in the top of the first inning. They would score one more run in the top of the fifth and hold on to win 3-2. The second game wasn't quite as fortunate. Syracuse took a 2-0 lead after back to back one run innings in the 3rd and 4th. Louisville got one run back in the top of the fifth, and then scored two runs in the top of the 7th to put themselves in position to win 3-2 again. Unfortunately, they could not hold up in the bottom half of the inning and Syracuse scored two runs to win the game. Louisville is now 24-17 on the season, having rebounded a bit with the series sweep over Virginia, and they'll finish the series against Syracuse tomorrow at noon.

Women's Tennis took on a top 50 ranked team yesterday when they traveled to Clemson. The Cards have been in an extreme rough patch during the conference season, and yesterday was no different. After starting the season 12-1 with a pair of conference wins over Notre Dame and Pittsburgh, Louisville hit the full conference stretch and stumbled mightily. Starting the stretch with a sweep loss at number 3 Georgia Tech, the Cards have since lost 6 straight and 7 of the last 8. Their lone win since starting the true conference schedule was a 4-3 squeaker over Virginia Tech at home. Despite the hard times the Cards have fallen on, there is still at least a little bit of time to recover before the post season. Louisville has a road match against Wake Forest on Sunday before returning home to take on Miami and Florida State next weekend. After that comes the ACC Tournament. If the Cards can recover just a bit in these last few matches, they may get a second wind going forward.

The Track and Field teams both took to Cardinal Park yesterday for the Louisville Invitational. It was an extremely successful meet for the Cards, with both the women's and men's teams taking first. The women topped Purdue and the men beat out Michigan State. With 10 wins on the day, the list of positive results for the Cards is long. Dorcas Wasike won the 5000m and set a UofL record in the process. All other results are available on the Louisville site, as Louisville T&F looks geared up for continued success.

Louisville Rowing got started at the Clemson Invitational yesterday and finished with a pair of top 4 finishes in the Varsity events. The Cards will continue that event this evening and look for additional success against a decent group of squads.

Women's Golf is at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic in Athens, Georgia, where Lauren Hartlage got off to a roaring start in her opening round. Hartlage shot 6 under par in the first round and currently sits tied for second after a 1 over second round. Louisville on the whole sits in 7th place in the event. They're 24 shots off of the leader, Alabama, but are much closer to other schools in the top 5. The event ends today, and Louisville will look for a strong finish in the last two rounds.

Louisville Swimming and Diving are at the TYR Pro Series Mesa event, where they've been since Thursday. Mallory Comerford, as she is wont to do, won the 100M freestyle for Louisville's second win of the event. The event wraps up today, starting at noon local time. Louisville has had significant individual success in swimming and diving recently, and it appears to be only a matter of time before the Cards can really put something together as a team. 

Women's Soccer was in action last night taking on their final spring opponent of the year at NKU. The game was originally supposed to be held in Louisville but was changed for unknown reasons. As is typical, there is no information available from last night's game, but I thought that I would mention it anyway so that you could all remember that I love soccer.

In addition to all of the games and events I've already mentioned, also in action today are Lacrosse  and Volleyball. The Lacrosse team is taking on Virginia at noon (weather permitting), trying desperately to recover from some of the lumps they've taken this season. Despite some disappointing results, Scott Teeter has definitely shown things to be optimistic about going forward with a program that was on the ropes. Volleyball is wrapping up their spring schedule with a match against Butler tonight at 6:30. This one is at Cardinal Arena and the exhibition is free.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

For a full hour devoted to chatter about all of the sports I've just mentioned, plus utter nonsense, be sure to tune into the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour on WCHQ FM. The CCRH is every Saturday (that's today!) from 11-Noon. Paulie will man the studio today, as normal, joined by Worldwide Jeff McAdams and Mike Gilpatrick from River City Cards. No phone call for me today, but the folks in the studio will have plenty to get you through your weekend. Check out 100.9 WCHQ FM, wchqfm.com, the WCHQ App, or WCHQ FM on Facebook to hear/watch the show.

Here's a link to the Facebook Live broadcast:
THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR 4/14/18

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-