CARDINAL COUPLE

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Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Softball Picked Fourth... WBB Hosts Clemson... WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE


Softball

If you are hanging out in Louisville, then you know the weather is dreadful.  However, if you are traveling down to Orlando with softball consider yourself lucky.

They begin their season at the UCF Softball Invitational this weekend.  They will hang out southeast for the first 14 games of the season before coming home to Ulmer.

It was announced yesterday afternoon that Louisville softball was predicted to finish fourth in the conference.  Florida State was a near-unanimous pick to finish first.  North Carolina received the only other first place vote.  Since teams cannot vote for themselves in this case FSU would have had to select UNC.  Notre Dame was picked to finish third and Boston College fifth with the Cards sandwiched between.

UofL finished fourth last season with a conference record of 7-8.  Their overall record was 23-18.  My prediction is that the Cards finish top three in the ACC.  I’d be dumb not to list the Seminoles as my number one, even with the loss of their star pitcher to graduation.  I think Louisville has the potential to make it to number two, but do not foresee them falling below fourth.

Women’s Basketball

Women’s basketball returns home tonight to host Clemson.  The Tigers are dead last in the ACC at 1-10.  They’re on a five-game skid and most likely won’t receive a bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Jeff Walz constantly speaks of there being no easy games in the ACC.  The results of some of those games say otherwise but I can’t blame him for taking things one game at a time instead of looking too far into the future.  This could be a good game to clean up a few things.

The defense has started having a few holes.  Yeah, you can’t expect to hold opponents to single-digits every quarter and you can’t always stop lights out shooting, but with different lineups in the game there has been an occasional defensive miscue or miscommunication.

Rebounding has digressed in the past few games.  DOO-BLAY is still getting her double-double but there hasn’t been much help for her.  Bionca and Sam have both had some good games on the boards, but neither is consistently hauling in seven or eight rebounds.  Offensive rebounds have looked good lately.  They have provided opportunities for second chance points so now the defensive rebounds need to start coming more often.


As much as I love watching our dynamic duo put on a show I would like this game to be one where they can let other players do most of the work.  UConn is only five days away and NITE-NITE and DOO-BLAY need to be fully rested for that.  This is also a good chance to let other players take leadership since, sadly we are getting close to the end of the season and MHA can’t stick around forever.

My prediction for the game is pretty straight forward: we win by 30+ points.  Louisville is excellent, and Clemson is below average.  This game will be an all around well-balanced performance and all 10 active players on the roster will log at least three minutes.

Louisville has had three straight home games with over 10,000 fans in attendance.  In fact, it has been an average of 12,333 fans per game the last three games.  Can the fans do it again and keep the attendance streak going?

Make sure to come on down to Second and Main and (hopefully) see Louisville improve their series record with Clemson to 5-3!

LINK:

WALZ DISCUSSES CLEMSON, SYRACUSE, MYISHA


Happy Wednesday and Go Cards!

Jared

19 comments:

  1. Boy, oh boy. What a rough stretch for my Clemson Tigers. First, you...then Duke and Florida State. Whoever made this schedule up must be a fan of punishment.

    We are not a good basketball team, with just one conference win over Boston College, and 11-13 overall. This is discouraging since our pre-conference slate was 10-3.

    There are calls for replacing our head coach Audra Smith and we're barely getting 600 a game for home contests.

    We have no effective three point shooters, no one in the top 30 in scoring in the ACC and besides our win, haven't gotten within seven of any ACC opponents. Danielle Edwaards and Kobi Thornton are our only bright spots.

    Mind you I am not coming over here to your fine site to cry and draw sympathy. I'm just relating the facts. I will watch tonight from home, remain optimistic and hope we can catch the Cards off guard, but the likelihood of that is equal to us getting Jeff Walz to become our head coach and Louisville beating us in football. Sorry, I had to sneak that one in.

    Louisville is my second-favorite team in women's college basketball and it is my hope to someday come up and see the majestic KFC YUM! Center and the WBB team play. We almost were able to swing this trip tonight but football signing day today and I'll be at our reception for that.

    Hoping for an exciting game and wishing the Cardinals the best of successes the rest of the way. Pray for us, tonight. LOL.

    Your friend,
    #1 Clemson Fan
    Arthur
    Greer, SC

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for checking in, Arthur and if you can make it up here in the future, I'll set you up with some primo seats. Are you going to the ACC Tournament? Let me know.

      Clemson football. Ha-ha. Good one. We've given you some games and we're still aiming for you.

      Paulie

      Delete
    2. Probably not Paulie. Grandkids coming in town that weekend.

      Your friend
      #1 Clemson Fan
      Arthur
      Greer, SC

      Delete
  2. Whoever made up the poll linked up below must have been on drugs and supplied their stash to the voters. Go over there and turn this thing around in our favor! No Asia Durr? Inconceivable!

    https://herosports.com/basketball/vote-best-womens-basketball-player-atlantic-coast-conference-acc-blbl

    Go Vote!

    Paulie

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gotta be an early April Fool's Day joke.

      Delete
    2. Yeah, K, you could almost think that but this guy is a serious writer and...well...it just goes to show that sometimes the Internet can be a very, very strange place.

      Paulie

      Delete
  3. Good morning cards Nation big game vs Clemson tiger,hopefully will see more time for the reserves tonight.
    Go Cards!
    MLW

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi! Arthur told me about your website. I am a lifelong Clemson Athletics fan. On Smith:

    Audra Smith is 52-92 and 9-64 in the ACC over four years at Clemson. But, they're a football school. She seems nice enough but it might be time for her to be replaced. That is, if the athletic director at Clemson even cares about women's basketball. We don't get many in Bon Secours (our home arena) to watch the WBB team play. Even the students are sparse.

    I think it is time for Smith to go and our A.D. to shell out a little money to get a quality coach with a winning reputation. The problem is, no one cares about Clemson WBB besides a select few. I know of a side door no one mans and you can walk in and watch games free and hardly anyone even uses it.

    Appreciate what you got Cards fans. It isn't uniform across the ACC, that's for sure.

    Charlie the Tuna

    ReplyDelete
  5. walz on radio this morning with howie someone named their cat asia purr o my goodness

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My auto-correct on cell phone always suggests Asia Purr when I tweet on it. Hilarious!

      Paulie

      Delete
  6. How about Meow Hines-Allen?

    Curtis Franklin

    ReplyDelete
  7. Or Myisha Feline-Allen? Good stuff today Jared. Will softball games have any Internet viewing available. Go Softball!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think any of the coverage info for softball has been posted, yet, but in general, I would expect most at Ulmer and most Away in-conferencr games to be at least streamed. Not all, but most.

      Delete
    2. To confirm what Jeff said. ACC Network Extra will televise a lot of the Ulmer and away ACC games and ESPN 2 a couple. Don Russell and Maryssa Becker most likely on the softball calls locally. No coverage for the Orlando Tournament that I know of yet but I have reached out to Softball SID Lori Korte for confirmation. Statbrodcast and Twitter are great ways to follow the Softball Cards, as well as your #1 independent source for UofL women's athletics...CARDINAL COUPLE!

      Paulie

      Delete
    3. OK. Thanks for update

      Delete
  8. Is there no radio coverage for Softball like there is for baseball?

    ReplyDelete
  9. From yesterday. Asia Durr and Andy Katz on Twitter.

    https://twitter.com/ncaawbb/status/960948687374516224/video/1

    The Deb Factor

    ReplyDelete
  10. 2017 WBB Final Attendance

    1. South Carolina 16 196,431 12,277
    2. Tennessee 16 146,948 9,184
    3. Iowa St. 19 173,018 9,106
    4. UConn 16 142,213 8,888
    5. Louisville 20 165,115 8,256
    6. Notre Dame 17 137,764 8,104
    7. Mississippi St. 13 86,328 6,641
    8. Michigan St. 14 84,152 6,011
    9. Purdue 15 89,099 5,940
    10. Baylor 18 106,812 5,934

    You would think the local newspaper in Louisville might cover the team. They rarely do.

    As an "outside observer" I find that you, give the best coverage here. A couple of other website do and, of course, there is the schools official website. Never think that what you do here is unimportant or essential and keep up the excellent work in all women's sports at UofL.

    Philly Fan, Ford man.

    ReplyDelete

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