Women's soccer receives awards...We heard it thru the grapevine...UK for real this year?

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FRIDAY CARDINAL COUPLE:

-Exeter 1st team, Hunter 2nd team NSCAA All-Region

-Two Lady Cards recruits coming for a visit

-Lady Kats defeat DUKE in Rupp

Exeter led Louisville in
scoring for 2010 and 2011.

Two players on the University of Louisville women's soccer team have received prestigious awards...being selected to the NSCAA All-Region teams for 2011. Scorer Christine Exeter was named to the 1st team and defender Chelsea Hunter has been selected for the second team.

Exeter, who will be a junior next season, was the Cards leading scorer and All-BIG EAST Conference selection. She may well be on her way to re-writing all the records for scoring at the University of Louisville and helped power the girls to a #24 season ending ranking this year and trip to NCAA Women's Soccer's Sweet Sixteen.

Hunter's defense helped
Louisville reach the
NCAA Sweet Sixteen.

Hunter made the second squad and is a remarkable "comeback story". After seeing limited action her first two years at Louisville, she had to sit out 2010 with an injury. The time off gave her the chance to re-focus and strengthen her defending capabilities and she returned this year as part of a strong Cardinal defensive line. 

Soccer is alive and well at UofL...for both the men's and women's squads...and plans to build a new, 5000 seat soccer stadium on campus are well under way with two sites being surveyed and reviewed for possible location.

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Rumors and tweets out there in cyberspace are indicating that two of the most sought after girls' high school players in the class of 2013 are headed to Louisville for a visit over the President's Day weekend. Mercedes Russell and Stephanie Mavunga will be in town for a visit to watch the Lady Cards play Notre Dame and check out the Louisville campus.

Russell is a dominant post player.

Russell, from Springfield, Oregon is considered by many the top recruit in the 2013 class. She is a paint monster and is drawing interest from Connecticut, Tennessee and all the women's college basketball "bigs". Russell teamed with Mavunga to lead the USA U 16 team to the gold this year in Mexico and has made a prior visit to the UofL campus to see what Walz and the Cards have to offer.

Mavunga is a high profile scorer

Mavunga hails from Brownsburg, IN...a suburb of Indianapolis, and is widely recognized as the best player in Indiana girls high school hoops. She's another dominater in the paint and packs gymnasiums wherever she goes with fans wishing to see her play. 

Although 2235 miles separate the two talented players, they've become fast friends and could probably show up on some campus as a package deal to play their four years of college hoops.

Always good to recruit and gather skilled post players with the ability to score. Here's hoping the girls have a great time on their visit in February and enjoy the state-of-the-art KFC-YUM! Center...

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After Kentucky defeated Louisville by 20 points on Sunday, there was some discussion that Louisville's women pretty much destroyed themselves with lack of effort and weak rebounding. Was Kentucky really that good a team? Would the Lady Wildcats suffer a drop off in their next game...against #6 Duke in Rupp Arena?

Last night, in front of 14,508 fans in Rupp, UK defeated the Blue Devils 72-65. The Cats trailed by eight late in the first half but made a serious run at Duke, had a 31-30 lead with a minute left in the first half but went into the locker room down 34-31. UK grabbed the lead early in the final half and got back-to-back threes from Bria Goss and Adia Mathies with five minutes remaining to go up by ten and hold off the visitors to win by seven.

Mathies followed the strong
effort vs. Louisville with 23
against Duke last night.

Mathies led UK with 23 points, Goss added 19 and freshman Azia Bishop...who had only 11 points coming into the contest, erupted for 12 points and 10 rebounds in the UK win.

UK may just be the real thing. We'll watch how they do in South Bend against the Notre Dame Lady Irish this month...but, last night, UK showed that the Louisville win was no fluke and that Matthew Mitchell just might have a bona-fide contender for the Final Four in Denver.

Meanwhile, Louisville looks to shake off the dismal performance against UK on Saturday when (0-7) Gardner Webb comes to visit. Louisville dropped to #15 in the NCAA rankings after the loss in Lexington.

The Cards shouldn't have much trouble against Gardner Webb tomorrow...we'll have a breakdown of the visitors tomorrow and a full recap of action after the game for you here at CARDINAL COUPLE.

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