Friday Food Coma Cardinal Couple-- FRIDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Now that we're all well overfed on various Thanksgiving meals, our attention turns back to sports.

Volleyball

We've got a bit of recap to cover here due to the Thanksgiving posting yesterday.

On Wednesday, the Wide netters travelled to Boston College for what should've been a pretty easy win over a team in the bottom quarter of the ACC standings.  The win was achieved, but not without some major bumps along the road.

The Cards maintained the lead for most of the first 2 sets, but The Eagles stuck around and made them much closer sets than I really thought they should've been.  At the set break, though, it was 2-0 UofL over BC.

(Rumors on Lotta Poundavitch continue to swirl)

The 3rd set is where things got weird.  There was no streaming for this one, so I was relegated to watching stats trackers while I was out and about with friends in a pre-Thanksgiving gathering.  When I pulled the stats tracker back up for what I thought would be about the beginning of the third set, I did a double-take.  BC was leading 9-1 on the way to 11-1.  A little bit of back-and-forth scoring went on, still in the favor of BC, but not in big runs, until the score reached 8-20.  At that point, the Cards triggered their run.  Led by Molly Sauer's serving, the Cards came roaring back to tie it at 20.  That's a 12-0 run.  Earlier in the season we saw a 10-0 run with Wilma Rivera at the service line, and those two runs may be the biggest "something to zero" runs I've ever seen in a volleyball match.  Back to mostly trading points, but BC was able to pick up the 3rd set 25-23.  Given how much of a lead the Eagles had in that set, I'd say, despite winning the set, most of the momentum was in the Cards favor at that point.

The 4th set was still closer than I would've liked with BC as an opponent, but some separation was finally achieved towards the end of the match and UofL won the set 25-20, and the match 3-1.

Give Melanie McHenry a double-double with 16 kills and 12 digs, Wilma Rivera as well with her
typical 13 digs and 37 assists.  No one else scored in double digits, though the usual scoring committee for the Cards did well overall, the middles, Maggie DeJong and Jasmine Bennett each had 7 kills, and the other outsides, Tess Clark and Amanda Green, had 9 each.

That win, with an unexpected NC State loss to Duke, well and truly eliminates NC State from ACC championship contention.  In fact, that drops them to a tie with Miami in 3rd.  (If a tie-breaker mattered for anything in 3rd place, Miami holds the tie-break over NC State with the one head-to-head victory)

Technically the Cards are, at this point, back in the sole lead of the ACC at this point because Pitt didn't play Wednesday.  So the Cards have half a game on them, but Pitt has a game in hand, so effectively we're still talking a tie with UofL holding the tie-breaker.

That means that, with UofL's match at 1pm today, available on ACC Network Extra, at Syracuse, they are playing to guarantee a share of the ACC championship.  To win the championship outright, we'll need Pitt to take a loss at either Virginia Tech today, or at Virginia tomorrow.  Neither of those outcomes are particularly likely with UVA and VT also being bottom quarter dwellers in the conference.

So, on to Syracuse...I say this about that team every year, but they block well.  If you're a fan of good blocking in Volleyball, as I am, this should be a great game to watch.  In their last outing, a 5-set affair against Notre Dame in the Carrier Dome, SU chalked up 22 blocks.  Amber Witherspoon had a hand in 16 of them.  Syracuse sits in sole possession of 5th place in the ACC currently, with only that last game separating them and Notre Dame.  They'll be looking to make a case for an NCAA tourney berth, a slim possibility for them at this point, but they'll be doing everything they can to make it happen.  And UofL, of course, will be entering this one with the mentality (probably completely correct) that the ACC Championship, and automatic NCAA qualifier, is on the line.

Basketball

We've got a double-header in basketball today.  The women host in-state foe Murray State.  My
brother and niece will be joining us for this one, and unless I miss my guess, he, as an alum of MSU, will be wearing Blue and Gold for this one.  There will be no recriminations from the rest of us in red and black, pretty much everything thinks the W will go to the Cards today.

This will likely be the first in-state loss for the Racers, having previously knocked off Georgetown, and NKU.  They haven't been fairing too well against border states, however, with losses to Butler and Evansville in Indiana, as well as Lipscomb in Tennessee.

The evening match has the men hosting St. Francis.  Don't count on a nail biter for this one, either.

All three events today are on the ACC Network Extra if you're not in Louisville or Syracuse.  Personally, I'll be in my usual WBB seat in section 115, row CC, but I will have my phone, with an external battery pack with me and doing my best to get the ACC Network Extra stream of volleyball since they both get underway at 1pm.

Thanksgiving

I had a wonderful low-key Thanksgiving yesterday, I hope you did, too.  We have said it numerous times over the course of this month, but we are truly thankful for our readers, listeners and supporters in various forms that make doing Cardinal Couple meaningful.  Your support, both financially, and non, makes it worth getting up and getting going on Friday and Sunday mornings to write my articles, it makes it worth getting up every Saturday morning to drive over to the WCHQ studios to talk about sports on a locally-focused radio station and network stream.

Thank you for your support.

Radio

Speaking of WCHQ, we will be back on the airways again this week.  Paulie and I will be in studio but I believe Jared will be making change and making it up in volume at the bank and Case is off.  I have heard Julie Sullivan will be in and we may have a special phone guest. We don't really have any drop-off when the subs come onto the court.

We'll have a lot to cover. WBB and Volleyball results. Maybe we'll even talk about an event in Lexington at Kroger's -- or something like that. I hear the Petrino pigskin bunch might be herding Cats. 

We'll be on the air, as typical, at 11am, on WCHQ 100.9 FM and streaming live via the WCHQ app and http://crescenthillradio.org.

-- 

JMcA