Fans Feel a Few Feel Good Days -- SUNDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Cardinal faithful could be forgiven for feeling a bit footloose and fancy-free yesterday.

After the body blows of the week, news of new scandal that is anything but behind us, UofL fans needed to take a breather, and take an opportunity to put the problems out of mind for just a little while and recharge.  Louisville athletics, on the whole, game them reasons, ok maybe excuses, to do that.  The NCAA and the FBI will still be there, but it's reasonable to take a little self-care and just enjoy what their is to enjoy for the weekend.

Field Hockey and Volleyball gave us the first reasons to look up from the tablet and laptop screen refreshing sports news sites to see the latest in the unfolding scandal.  With signature wins over top teams, Field Hockey vs Syracuse, and Volleyball over FSU.  Case did a fine job recapping those match-ups yesterday.  We mustn't leave out Women's Soccer, either.  While they eventually fell to a very high ranked Duke team in double-OT, they made a great showing out on the pitch and gave us lots to be proud of.

Yesterday, Football romped over Murray State.  With a recognition of the Men's Basketball team on the field, David Padgett declined to join them, wanting the moment to be about the players, not about him; and continuing to show the class that has already come to define his young career.  Also in action last night, the Men's Soccer team did overcome Duke in a 1-0 win in Durham.

Life goes on in the UofL Athletic department.  Forever change though it may be, there are 23 sports to field, and people are moving ahead with the day to day operations.

Today we look forward to a couple of more matchups in the core sports we cover.

Volleyball

Cardinal Arena plays host to another set of Floridians with Miami coming to town.  They're on their way back south after playing Friday in South Bend at Notre Dame.  They took that one in 4, but The Irish gave them a serious battle, with the final set being played to 32-30.

The Hurricanes come in to Louisville still undefeated on the year, but also someone still not ranked.  They are receiving votes, so if they maintain their winning ways, they may find their way into the rankings this week or next.  It's UofL's job to hold that off.

The Cardinals played inspired Friday night, let's hope they can keep that level of play as high for what may be as good or better of a team.  If there is a critique to be found in the UofL play Friday night, it's in service errors.  13 service errors is usually a recipe for a loss, it's a testament to the team's play that they were able to find enough points to make up for those errors.

Field Hockey

The Field Hockey squad is back in action as well, welcoming the non-conference opponent for the weekend in Central Michigan. Unranked, on paper the Chippewas shouldn't represent much of a threat to the UofL squad, but they always field a good squad and are dangerous to overlook.  Post-game Friday, Sowry opined that the squad hadn't played their best hockey, but yet they managed to knock off #7 Syracuse.  Look at this one as a tune-up.  Coach has the fodder to point out what they did wrong, giving them motivation to fix those problems today and secure the win against Central Michigan.

Both of these events kick off at 1pm, and both are available on The ACC Network Extra.  Time for some picture-in-picture action.

I'll be at Volleyball, look for occasional, but not frequent, tweets from the CardCoupleRadio Twitter account.  I suspect, but haven't heard for sure, that Paulie will be at Field Hockey covering the action there.  Check his tweets out at the CardinalCouple Twitter account.

(editor note...Yes, I will be at Field Hockey...watching Minnie Mink...pictured above) 

Radio Recap

Jared couldn't be with us due to duties in the banking industry, but Daryl Foust filled in quite admirably in the studio.  We talked about the Men's Basketball scandal, of course, and shared some diversity of thoughts about what needed to happen for the program going forward.

It was a fun-filled show, laughing through our tears and giving Case a hard time and having him download everything we could think of...

Check out the rebroadcast at The Crescent Hill Radio Soundcloud.

-- JMcA