CARDINAL COUPLE

CARDINAL COUPLE
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Friday, September 16, 2016

Friday Cardinal Couple - Injuries Slow Volleyball

Volleyball Takes a Hit


Injuries slowed the Cardinal Volleyball squad last night against a good Kentucky team.

With almost half of the Louisville starting line-up out of commission for the match last night, the Wildcats took advantage of it and took the match with a 3-0 sweep (25-15, 25-18, 25-9).  The Cats hit a very good .358 as a team for the match, and a blistering .524 in the third set as a team on their way to the win.

The Cards were without the services of starting setter Kali Eaken, and starting middle Jasmine Bennett for concussions.  The third member unavailable was all-around utility player and hitter Janelle Jenkins.  Jenkins was not in attendance, with the report being that she was at the hospital with, initially, suspicions of appendicitis, though a report later indicated that was ruled out.

Of course, in the middle, the Cards can fall back to Maggie DeJong, who did a marvelous job playing that position for the past two years, although she is just returning from a hamstring sprain, and while cleared to play full speed, may not be quite at 100%.  The setting is backfilled by a combination of Lyndsay Palmer and Morgan Miller.

In Jenkins' place, we saw the first starting line-up appearance by freshman Megan Sloan, who acquitted herself fairly well in the match with 5 kills on 19 attempts.  That comes out to an average of .158, which is typically pretty uninspiring, but is one of the better hitting averages for The Cards last night.  Coline Coessens made it to .222 with 3 kills on 9 attempts.

Looking for the positives in this one, the service errors were brought under control in this match.

Coach Kordes was concerned after the match against Wisconsin about the 12 service errors, and the team brought that down to only 2 in this match.  The tradeoff is less aggressive serving, and Kordes was also disappointed in the serve targeting by the Cardinals, with too many serves being handled by UK's libero instead of going to the zone called for by the coaching staff.

While it particularly stings to continue a lengthy losing streak to the Cats, and Coach Kordes made a point of not wanting to give, or accept, excuses in the post-match press pow-wow, you probably can write this one off, at least somewhat, to circumstances overtaking the Cards team.

The Cards have struggled through the whole season so far with a constantly shifting line-up, and have persevered and shown their depth, but the lack of consistency in line-ups can't help in bringing consistency, and thus tuning for excellence, to their play.

The Kordes Krewe doesn't have long to dwell on this one as they are back in action tonight against Lipscomb, this one at Cardinal Arena on campus, adding to the hustle and bustle all along Floyd Street.  With a first serve of 7pm.

Field Hockey and Men's Soccer


Adding to that hustle and bustle on Floyd Street, Field Hockey has a major game tonight against the Duke Blue Devils.  This, of course, is "The Student vs The Master" battle, with former UofL Head Coach Pam Bustin coming in with Duke, to play against her former assistant and current UofL Head Coach Justine Sowry.  The Field Hockey Cards have started the season 6-0, which ties the best ever start for the Cards, a 6-0 start back in 1977.  So Field Hockey will be looking for a win tonight to secure that best ever start, as well as make a statement with the overwhelmingly dominant ACC.  Duke comes into tonights game ranked second in the country and in a three-way tie for first in the ACC in the still extremely early conference slate.  This is the conference opener for the Cards while the Blue Devils secured a 3-2 win over UVA last Friday and also are 6-0 on the season.  Current overall rankings for ACC schools see Syracuse at number one, Duke 2nd (as mentioned), UNC 3rd, UofL coming in at 6th, Wake Forest 11th, UVA 14th, and Boston College 18th.  In a shocking turn of events (insert sarcasm mark, here), every ACC Field Hockey team is in the top 20 rankings.

Also along Floyd Street, Men's Soccer will be in action at Lynn Stadium against the number one team in the country Notre Dame.

Field Hockey gets underway at 6pm, while Men's Soccer shares a start time with Volleyball of 7pm.

Radio Recording


WORLDWIDE AND CASE TRYING TO GET
PAULIE TO THE STUDIO
Due to scheduling conflicts with some incidental event tomorrow at noon, Paulie and I will be prerecording https://twitter.com/CardinalCouple, while I plan on starting the evening at Trager, catching roughly the first half of the game, and then moving north on Floyd to Cardinal Arena to catch the Volleyball match.  I'll try to tweet some of the coverage from https://twitter.com/CardCoupleRadio.  I believe Case may be making an appearance at the Men's Soccer match, so if Soccer is your bag, you can catch up with him at https://twitter.com/bstcasescenario.
to the studio this afternoon to pre-record this week's Cardinal Couple Radio Hour.  This means we won't have results, when aired tomorrow morning, of tonight's Volleyball, and Field Hockey events, but we will be splitting our efforts to cover the events of the evening.  Paulie will be spending the evening at Trager Stadium to cover Field Hockey and should be tweeting some from there. 

-- JMcA

3 comments:

  1. Plain and simple. Kordes needs to recruit height. UK dominated front line last night. Was there (saw you Paulie on press row) and Cards looked awfully small compared to UK front line

    Curtis Franklin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't really disagree with you too much, but keep in mind:
      1: We were without 6'2" Jasmine Bennett last night.
      2: Look at the freshman class...6'2", 6'2", 6'1", 5'11".
      3: Kaz Brown is a beast and would contribute to making just about any front row look small.

      Delete
  2. Side note: Asia Taylor scores 10 points in 10 minutes last night

    ReplyDelete

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