Sunday Cardinal Couple -- Wins and Losses

Football Wins

For the first time since Johnny U was at UofL, the Cardinals havegone to Tallahassee and beaten the Florida State Football team.

Blanton Creque, perhaps the second most consistently positive player and story to come out of the UofL Football this season, but a 34-yard field goal through the posts for the last minute, last 5 seconds, to be exact, win over the Seminoles.  The Cards are victorious in this one 31-28.

Unusually for the Cards, they got the job done more on the ground than they did in the air, with 156 yards of passing, but 293 yards of rushing.  That may be an even brighter result for the Cards than just the win of the single game as the team has seemed to really struggle to get the run game in gear this season, but this result shows that they can make it happen.  A more balanced attack as the season goes on should help to improve the Cardinal's prospects.

Perhaps take a brief moment and show some compassion to any Seminoles fans that you know (I've got an FSU alum friend), as they are off to their worst start since 2009 and are in real danger, at this point, of not even being bowl-eligible.

Field Hockey

Photo by Jared Anderson

Alas, now we have to cover some losses.  Field Hockey went down in a tough battle against Virginia for the top seed in the ACC tournament.  Both teams were 4-1 coming into the game, with Louisville having one of it's best seasons ever.  With the 2-1 win, Virginia ends conference play at 5-1, while Louisville drops to a 4-2 tie with Duke.  Duke has the tie-breaker over Louisville with the head-to-head win over the Cards earlier in the season.  So Duke will be the two seed, and Louisville drops to the 3 seed.

Louisville's goal in the match came at about 14 minutes into the game.  On a penalty corner, Taylor Stone got the shot past the UVA Goalkeeper, but it hit another UVA player's foot, resulting in a rare penalty stroke.  Stone took the stroke and put the ball into the corner of the cage for her 7th goal of the season.

With a 1-0 lead at halftime, it should just be a matter of refining what you've been doing, but Coach Sowry was quite unhappy with her team's response in the 2nd half, saying they didn't pay attention to any of the adjustments that the coaching staff called for.  As a result UVA came out with an aggressive attack and scored in the first 2 minutes of the second half to tie up the score.  UVA maintained control throughout most of the 2nd half, but UofL's defense held strong until the last 3 minutes of the game with The Hokies were able to score on a penalty corner, with the 2-1 game winner.

Field Hockey will be in action again today at noon with another national powerhouse non-conference matchup in Michigan visiting Trager.  The season will wrap on October 9th, with Ohio coming in to visit Trager.  The ACC tournament will also be at Trager, starting Thursday November 2nd, with UofL's game starting at 4pm, barring OTs and shootouts in earlier games that may push that schedule back.

It's tough to rebound for Sunday matches after playing on Saturday but Field Hockey faces another top 10 foe and will be pumped up for this one!

Post game interview below:
COACH SOWRY POST GAME

Swimming and Diving

Despite a lot of competitive swimming, again national powerhouse Michigan, came out on top on both sides of the dual swimming meet.  The women dropped the overall competition 220-127, while the men came up short 230-119.  The Cardinals did have several wins in individual events yesterday, several of which we mentioned during the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour (particularly in the "Final Thoughts").

Mallory Comerford, in a result that win surprise absolutely no one,  touched first in the 50 Free with a time of 22.90.  Molly Fears has singlehandedly opened a new front of Cardinals competitiveness on the Diving side of the sport, winning the 1-meter springboard with a score of 279.60.

Nicolas Albiero won the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:46.11.  And finally, of the wins, Rachael Bradford-Feldman won the 400 IM with a time of 4:14.05

In Action Today

Women's Soccer is in action at the time of this writing against UNC with a 10 am start, you can catch the end of this one on the ACC Network Extra.  The update so far is scoreless at half-time.  Volleyball has a 1 pm start, seemingly with no video coverage at all, an unusual state of affairs for volleyball in this day and age.  They will also be taking on Florida State.  The team was in Tallahassee yesterday, and did make it to the Football game to cheer on their fellow Cardinals on the football field.  Both teams are coming off of Friday losses, UofL against a quite good Miami team, and FSU against the continuing enigma that is Notre Dame. And Field Hockey at Trager against Michigan, of course, noon go time.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

All four of us knuckleheads were in the studio again all together for the first time in several weeks, although Jared barely slipped in as the show was beginning thanks to crazy traffic in the Louisville Highlands...something about drunken half-marathons or something.  (The Bourbon Half-Marathon, no reports of actual drunkenness were received).

You can check out the replay of the show, including a chance to laugh at our really awful football result predictions here.

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JMcA