Women's Soccer scrimmages Ohio State...THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

LOOK ON THE SCOREBOARD AND SEE...NEVERMIND.

Activity actually got underway for fall sports at UofL last night...the women's soccer team traveled to Columbus, OH to face the Buckeyes in an exhibition match. We're trying to piece information together about how it went in Ohio...not a lot out there. Exhibition games are just that...many times the stat crews and assistant SID's aren't keeping any official numbers or statistics. The scoreboard isn't on at times. Sometimes they are without public address announcers as well. The games don't go in the records. 

Ohio State had their scrimmage against Louisville on the Internet last night but I couldn't figure out how to download the platform from a viewing device named Stanza that they use. It seemed more interested in trying to get me to set up a calendar on-line and gather personal information than showing soccer...so I gave up on it after awhile and kept searching Twitter for updates. I'm pretty sure it would have cost me something to watch it...but I never got that far in the process. Allegedly, a lot of BIG10 schools use Stanza. I'm glad Louisville is in the ACC. 

There were only a couple of mentions on the Ohio State women's soccer Twitter account. They announced the game would be starting soon. They show the Ohio State players doing the O-H-I-O for the fans after the game. No scores, no highlights...no "so-and-so looked good or "so-and so didn't do this" quotes. 

There was also a quote from the OSU coach Lori Walker Hock after the game. 

"It was great to get out and play. We were able to see where our returners were and we had a lot of young players out on the field. It was a productive scrimmage and it was a benefit for us to get experience against a physical team." 

That as vanilla as it gets in post-event comments. What do we gather from that? That Louisville is physical...which is probably a good thing for the Cards...and coach knows where her returners are. I've seen similar quotes from coaches who've been drubbed by 30 points and from coaches who were up by 5 going into the second half.  

They posted a few pictures. Those are posted here.

I also checked the Louisville women's soccer Twitter feed to see if any mention was made on the scrimmage. 

Blank.

Articles about Saturday's double header, reasons why players chose Louisville and a motivational Monday hashtag but no recap, no score. In fairness, UofL may not have had a sports information person on hand for the contest. Those folks are really busy on campus right now. 

Searching by coach name, I checked the Karen Ferguson-Dayes twitter feed. Nothing there since late September 2016. I get it. It's an exhibition, Paulie. The team has been practicing less than a week (ridiculous...when you consider football and basketball get months and months of preparation for the season). How much can you read into the first scrimmage of the year? 

As you have probably deduced by now...I didn't make the trip to Columbus to watch the action. I have gone to WSOC away games in the past...but this one just wasn't in the wheel-well for me yesterday. And, once again, it was just a scrimmage after only a couple of days of practice. I expected maybe just a brief mention of a score, maybe who scored...but I tend to set my expectations way too high at times, I suppose. To paraphrase Allen Iverson...

"Scrimmage. Scrimmage? We talkin' 'bout scrimmage?"  

(From last year's Fall Sports Media Day) 

We'll find out more about women's soccer and other sports at the Women's Fall Sports media day Friday at Lynn Stadium. WSOC, Field Hockey and Volleyball coaches and players will be on hand for interviews. This is a fun event. After they feed the media, they're gathered into a room and the coaches talk about the programs and then the media given access to another room and allowed to talk to specifically picked players from each sport. We've gotten some great interviews out of this event since they started holding it a couple years ago. We've found out what shampoo Worldwide uses (one of the best questions ever by a player -- Molly Sauer -- directed to a media member... The answer was Pert Plus...). We found out where Maya McClendon prefers to eat (her parents house).  Based on last year...the Field Hockey girls are usually pretty serious, the WSOC girls open and humorous (thank Inger Katrine Bjerke for that...) and who knows what we'll get out of Volleyball this year? New coach and all...

We'll have those interviews on THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR Saturday morning at 11 a.m. They'll consist of our "Catching Up" sequence...normally we'd bring you a former UofL WBB player but we'll catch up with the fall sports instead. 

So...let's recap. We know that one UofL women's fall sports team (WSOC) has faced someone else. Louisville is an aggressive team. We also know that Jeff Walz has safely arrived in Tokyo with Asia Durr and the rest of the USA U23 squad and they went to practice shortly after the plane landed. We know that Field Hockey had their first practice yesterday and so did Volleyball. We even know the UofL women's golf schedule for the season. 

Things are happening. The doldrums of summer have passed. Fall sports have begun. We'll be here to tell you about what we see (or don't see). 

paulie
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