Thursday Cardinal Couple - Is It Sunday Yet? Edition

THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

( Jeff McAdams dashes from Ulmer to the lacrosse fields and from New Orleans to the presentation of the naming of the conference UofL will spend a year in for Thursday's edition of CARDINAL COUPLE. He even made stops to help little old ladies dodge traffic on Cardinal Blvd. and help Mo off the bus at the SAC...that's our guy!)



I hope its not Sunday yet, because that would mean we missed some more good Cardinal Athletics in the meantime.

Softball Swings for State Swagger

While the Louisville Baseball team forced an inning of bonus baseball before falling to our neighbors to the east, Sandy Pearsall's Softball squad had better luck, and continues the great week in Louisville Athletics.

The scoring started in the second, and yes it involved a ball landing on the very crowded outfield berm. Taner Fowler got on base by being hit by a pitch, with Hannah Kiyohara following with a walk.  The setup in place, Kayla "De La" Soles put one over the left field fence to put three on the board.

The Cards put up another couple of runs in the 5th when Jordan Trimble singled to start the inning.  Alicja Wolny followed with a deep shot to right that didn't quite clear the fence, but did drop in and was more the sufficient to get Trimble home.  Wolny made it to 3rd.  Unfortunately, she got caught at home in a fielder's choice by Maggie Ruckenbrod.  The Ruck advanced to second, where she's usually throwing people out from her catcher's position, on a Taner Fowler sacrifice.  Hannah Kiyohara's single got her to 2nd on an overthrow at first and gave Maggie the chance to make it home for the final Card point of the game.

The Kentucky Wildcats picked up their only score in the 6th inning, but otherwise "Good Carl" Caralisa Connell was in control in the circle.

The Softball squad next take a trip to New England for a three game series with St. Johns with a noon and 2pm double-header on Saturday the 6th and a noon followup game on the 7th.  They'll then scoot over to play a noon and 2:30 double-header on Tuesday the 9th with Providence in Rhode Island.  Game times won't conflict with any Final Four basketball games in either bracket, and ESPN3 is apparently streaming the St. Johns games, so this would be a good time to check out the Softball Cards without suffering from a wind chill factor.

All's Quiet on the Western...er...the Lacrosse Front

Kellie Young's Lacrosse squad managed to draw a large media response to the Yum! Center on campus for their practice Wednesday afternoon, though rumor is that there were other goings on in the building...something about a broken leg?

Lacrosse has had a good break between games, giving them a good chance to practice for Notre

Dame's arrival at the UofL Lacrosse Stadium, adjacent to the Yum! Center on campus tomorrow (Friday) at 5pm.  6/7 ranked Notre Dame continues the steady stream of quality opponents that the Louisville Laxers are coming up against.

Marquette comes to join the fun on Sunday for a noon first draw, which leaves plenty of time to check out the Lacrosse game and still get home or wherever you're going, to be glued to a TV at 6:30.

Cardinal Couple Crashes the Crescent City

While much of CardNation is heading to Atlanta, at least a trio of Cardinal Couple writers are travelling to Lou Orleans for the Women's Final Four.  Jenny, Sandy and myself have travel plans in place to be in NOLA Sunday through Tuesday to cover Jeff Walz and the Louisville GiantSlayers as they hope to continue to shock the basketball world. Paulie will man the fort back here in Louisville...feeding the staff chimps and hopefully getting reports from us as time allows.

The fun continues Sunday evening at 6:30pm for the Cardinal Women's Basketball team.  Opinions have certainly turned as I note that all five of the ESPNw analysts have now picked our 5 seed Cardinals to beat the 2 seed Cal Bears.

If you're not making it to Nawlin's, all of the games will be on ESPN.  We're in the first game at 6:30 Eastern Time on Sunday, as mentioned.  The second game, the ever-expected UConn vs Notre Dame matchup should tip around 8:30.  The finals, hopefully an all-Big-East affair, will be Tuesday with an 8:30 Eastern Time tip.

New Conference Name

We've known for a while now that the seven Catholic schools are buying out the Big East name from the current conference.  What wasn't known is what the new name for what remains of the Big East was going to be.  The announcement has occurred, and the result is, "The American Athletic Conference".

The conference administration has already stated that they don't intend to use an acronym, instead referring to it in common usage as "The American".  I'm skeptical that the general public will follow
along and will instead use the acronym AAC, as is common practice with many conferences.

In any case, its only of minimal concern for us in Louisville given our imminent switch to the ACC.  The announcement on the Big East's website makes no mention and doesn't use any of the logos of the departing schools such as Pitt, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Louisville...no surprise, really, and I can't say that I blame them.

( An excellent report...by Jeff today. After an extensive review of the CARDINAL COUPLE Pick 'Em Challenge for the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, it seems our intrepid writer is in second place...as well..with a record of 50-10 as the team roll into New Orleans. Keith B. hangs on to a 52-8 mark to lead the way and Steve O. is in line for the show money at 49-11.

Also a great time for Paulie earlier Wednesday at the SAC Building for the greeting of the victorious WBB team. Lots of good interviews for our Saturday Radio Show and I also made it on a video! Several times. See if you can pick me out...link below)

Paulie

LINK:
CARDS RETURN TO LOUISVILLE


FINALLY.....WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THIS? CARDINAL COUPLE CO-OWNER SONJA ISN'T IN THE RUNNING TO WIN THE PICK 'EM...HER 43-17 RECORD IS A BIT BEHIND THE LEADERS...BUT HER FINAL FOUR?

UOFL, CAL, NOTRE DAME, UCONN.

SHE LIKES THE CARDS TO WIN IT ALL...

(SHE ALSO HATES THE SINGLE POINT PER WIN SYSTEM WE USE.)

ARE YOU LISTENING, SHONI? SONJA SAYS TITLE 'EM UP!

(PIC OF HER BRACKET)

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