Cardinal Couple Thursday

THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

( Jeff McAdams brings us news on the Volleyball schedule
and it looks like Sam Purcell hasn't spent his last 13 days in
Louisville in vain...the "official announcement" is out. He's a
UofL WBB assistant coach.)

Volleyball Schedule

 

Volleyball announced their fall schedule and it starts off with a bang.  Unfortunately, like last year, the later season matches aren't going to give us much challenge.

First, though, we have our first chance to see the team play together on August 24th for the annual Alumnae celebration.  If there are enough alumnae that choose to participate, the match will be vs alumnae, otherwise, it would be a red vs black match.  This is a free, unticketed, event at Cardinal Arena.

The regular season starts the next weekend with two matches at the Penn State Invitational against Syracuse and, obviously, Penn State.  Talk about starting the season off with the best.  Syracuse is a non-conference foe this year, of course.  Its nice to keep the familiarity of them fresh for when we meet back up with them in the ACC in 2014.  Their coach is the former UofL head coach, Leonid Yelin with Assistant Coach, UofL Alumna, Stephanie Cantway nee Marsh.  Leonid has continued his international recruiting ways with several players from Poland, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, and The Russian Federation.  Penn State, with head coach Russ Rose is, as always loaded for bear.  The storyline on this one is a sister vs sister matchup.  Deja McClendon, out of Manual High School here in Louisville, is the sister to incoming UofL freshman Maya McClendon.

The next trip is to North Dakota to match up with North Dakota State, Northern Iowa, and
Wisconsin.  No real catchy story lines for these matches.  North Dakota and Northern Iowa are competent teams, but neither should be much of a threat for the UofL team, but we need to be wary of Wisconsin.  While their results from last year aren't all that impressive, having dropped matches to Indiana, Purdue, Michigan State, Ohio State, and Creighton, this is a team that can be a threat.

Still on the road, but closer to home anyway, the next weekend sees the Cardinals down the road in Lexington for The Bluegrass Battle.  This involves matches against, of course, Kentucky, but also Minnesota and Pepperdine.  Kentucky, well...in-state rivalry match.  While I think UofL typically has a better team than Kentucky, Craig Skinner's Wildcats seem to play very well against us, so they're a team that we always have to be ready to play.  Minnesota will be a heck of a match-up.  Last year they split with Nebraska, Texas, Michigan and Michigan State.  They beat Illinois twice, and Purdue three times.  They, did, however, lose to Penn State three times, but there's no shame in that.  Pepperdine has an absolutely amazing men's team typically, but in women's volleyball they seem to be only mediocre with loses to Dayton, UCLA, BYU, and Colorado State among others.

Louisville finally gets their home opener on September 20th for the annual Active Ankle Challenge at Cardinal Arena.  The Cardinals play host to future ACC conference foe Virginia Tech, as well as Rice and Bowling Green.  Virginia Tech is the only real challenge this weekend, but not much of one.

Then the American Conference slate of matches.  We play all of these home and away, but there really won't be much challenge from most of them.  Memphis, Temple, Southern Methodist, Houston, USF, UCF (Central Florida), Cincinnati, Rutgers, and UConn.  Of those, Cincinnati is frequently a good team, though they really had a rough year last year with new coach Molly Alvey, hopefully they can get things put back together this year.  USF can put together a good team at times as well.  Beyond those two, we really shouldn't have all that much of a threat from our conference slate games.

There are two other non-conference matches mixed in with the conference match-ups, with Wichita State and Middle Tennessee State.  We've played both of these teams several times and they both are good.  Neither is a national powerhouse, but they're good, which will be nice to have some solid teams to play in the midst of a thoroughly mediocre conference schedule.

There is no conference tournament in the American Conference, so the winner of the regular season gets the automatic qualifying bid for the NCAA tournament.

Sam Purcell officially announced as Assistant Coach for Basketball

Nearly two weeks after we broke the news here at Cardinal Couple, Sam Purcell was officially
announced as the new assistant coach for Jeff Walz.  Joining us from Georgia Tech, Sam Purcell replaces Cameron Newbauer who took the head coaching position at Belmont University in Nashville.

Prior to his stint with the Yellow Jackets, Sam was an assistant at Tulsa.  He started his basketball staff duties at Auburn, which is also his Alma Mater.

-Jeff McAdams

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