Sunday Cardinal Couple

Welcome to the Extra Sleep, No More Shootouts, Sunday edition of Cardinal Couple.

I hope everyone enjoyed their extra hour of sleep last night (unless we have some non-American readers...and Arizonans, what's up with that, Arizona?).

I'm sure Paulie appreciated the extra hour as he's been burning the candle at both ends to bring you the awesome sports coverage, particularly of Field Hockey, that you've come to expect from Cardinal Couple (as well as Handicapping Heroes, FWIW).

November is the one month of the year where come out and ask you, dear reader, for your support of this site, and the work we do.  We don't get paid for this, we don't even get our expenses covered, generally.  It's a hobby.  It's a hobby that we love, and we're glad that you love it too.

UofL Athletics, (heck, the University as a whole) has been going through some rough patches recently.  Our mission is to bring the joy and excitement of UofL Women's Sports (and more!) to you.  We are independent of UofL and UofL Athletics, they don't exert control over our coverage in any way.  Sports will go on through the hardships.  We promise that we will do everything we can, to bring you the same great coverage of the wonderful things happening along Floyd Street and elsewhere.  We won't shy away from covering the challenges and scandals, but know that our primary mission is to cover sports that have been relatively untouched by these challenges.

Help us highlight the great things in college sports, and help shine a light on how great college sports can be when the motives and incentives are right.

Tennis

It was a pretty quiet day for athletics for Cardinals yesterday, unless you swing a tennis racket as they
had about 897 competitions going on yesterday.

The women are hosting the Louisville Tennis Classic, with Ball State, West Virginia, and Michigan State in attendance.  The morning session was all about the doubles, and Louisville did well, sweeping both Ball State and West Virginia.

In the afternoon session, Michigan State would take the singles matchup, with the Cards only winning on one court.

The rackets will be swinging at Bass-Rudd against today with a singles matchup against Ball State starting, of course, at 1pm.

The men were in action in two separate events.  The men's doubles team of Christopher Morin-Kougoucheff and Parket Wynn were defeated in the semi-finals of the event.  They represented the Cards well, and lost to what Coach Rex Ecarma seems to think might be the eventual champions of the event.

At the Dick Vitale Lakewood Ranch Intercollegiate Clay Court Classic, UofL was represented by several players.  Federico Gomez had the most success on the day, winning two singles matches, with Brandon Lancaster picking up a singles win as well.

Rowing

Rowing was in action, and I have to say, they have the best competition names of any sport I've ever seen, at the Head of the Hooch in Chattanooga, TN.

The Cardinals picked up wins in the Championship 8+, the Championship 4+, and the Championship 2x events.

Field Hockey in Action Today

This is a big one, folks.  If you've been following Cardinal Couple in any of the ways we communicate over the past couple of days, you know that this weekend is a big deal for Field Hockey.

They have played their way into the championship game of the ACC Tournament where they are matching up with North Carolina today at 1.  Before this year, the Field Hockey Cardinals had never won a game in ACC Tournament competition, so to find their way to the championship game this year is a monster of a result to begin with.

UNC advanced over Wake Forest on Thursday, the day of 3-2 victories, and upset number 1 seed Virginia on Friday to reach the championship game from their side of the bracket.  The Cardinals beat UNC 3-2 in the regular season, so the Tarheels will be out for revenge.  Ayeisha McFerran, for the Cards, is coming off of a dominant performance in the cage with a career high 18 saves against Duke on Friday.

This one is on ACC Network Extra at 1pm, in the Louisville area, you may have to catch it on the Raycom Sports Network (RCN).  That will show up on one of the Fox Sports channels, most likely, and it should also be available through the Fox Sports Go app.  You can also follow https://twitter.com/CardinalCouple and https://twitter.com/CardCoupleRadio for twitter updates as I believe both Paulie and myself will be in attendance.  I think we will also have Jared Anderson there as well getting more great photos.

Volleyball

Volleyball is also in action today.  They are in Durham, NC for a 1pm (natch) match against Duke.  The Cards are looking to maintain their tie for 1st place in the ACC standings, and hopefully to finally get some respect in the national rankings picture.

As long as UofL shows up and plays the way that we know they can play, they should come away from this one with a W.

They return for a homestand in Louisville next week, bring Virginia and Virginia Tech in to Cardinal Arena.

Today's action should be on ACC Network Extra as well.  Alas, they have apparently removed the picture-in-picture feature, so if you want to catch both this one and Field Hockey, you'll need multiple screens to pull this one off.  Or, you could come out to Field Hockey at Trager and watch Volleyball on your phone...that's what I'll be doing.

Radio Time

The FCC still hasn't come calling, so the four knuckleheads were on the radio again yesterday.

Paulie, Jared, Case, and myself all gathered around the table in the WCHQ studio for another hour of joshing, ribbing, tomfoolery, and some occasional talk about sports.  You will be able to check it out on the Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/chradio/cardinal-couple-20171104 when it gets posted.  (It's not yet there as of this writing).

Contrary to what we said during the show, when we thought next week's football game was going to be at noon, the game was announced as a 3:30 start, so we will have time to do the show and still get football goers to the stadium in time for the game, so we are planning to be live on the air next week.

-- JMcA

Edited to add:

Men's Soccer

How could I forget Men's Soccer.  They get their ACC tournament campaign underway today at, all together now, 1pm, against Virginia.  UofL got the first round bye, Virginia defeated Boston College to advance.  This one is at Lynn Stadium on Floyd Street, so if you're running out of screens, this is another one that you locals can check out in person.