Spring Sports Galore -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Spring Events in Full Swing

Normally, on a Saturday morning in the spring, you'll find I've written about Friday evening's softball game. That's usually enough to get through an article, but it often puts the other sports in action to the side, not giving all of the women's sports we cover here the recognition they deserve. UofL has had a busy start to the weekend, in women's sports especially, so I figured that I would give a quick recognition to all of these teams as best as I could.

The aforementioned Louisville Softball team did play yesterday. They took on the Syracuse Orange twice, in fact. In the first game of the day, the Cards jumped on top with a 2 run lead in the top of the first inning. They would score one more run in the top of the fifth and hold on to win 3-2. The second game wasn't quite as fortunate. Syracuse took a 2-0 lead after back to back one run innings in the 3rd and 4th. Louisville got one run back in the top of the fifth, and then scored two runs in the top of the 7th to put themselves in position to win 3-2 again. Unfortunately, they could not hold up in the bottom half of the inning and Syracuse scored two runs to win the game. Louisville is now 24-17 on the season, having rebounded a bit with the series sweep over Virginia, and they'll finish the series against Syracuse tomorrow at noon.

Women's Tennis took on a top 50 ranked team yesterday when they traveled to Clemson. The Cards have been in an extreme rough patch during the conference season, and yesterday was no different. After starting the season 12-1 with a pair of conference wins over Notre Dame and Pittsburgh, Louisville hit the full conference stretch and stumbled mightily. Starting the stretch with a sweep loss at number 3 Georgia Tech, the Cards have since lost 6 straight and 7 of the last 8. Their lone win since starting the true conference schedule was a 4-3 squeaker over Virginia Tech at home. Despite the hard times the Cards have fallen on, there is still at least a little bit of time to recover before the post season. Louisville has a road match against Wake Forest on Sunday before returning home to take on Miami and Florida State next weekend. After that comes the ACC Tournament. If the Cards can recover just a bit in these last few matches, they may get a second wind going forward.

The Track and Field teams both took to Cardinal Park yesterday for the Louisville Invitational. It was an extremely successful meet for the Cards, with both the women's and men's teams taking first. The women topped Purdue and the men beat out Michigan State. With 10 wins on the day, the list of positive results for the Cards is long. Dorcas Wasike won the 5000m and set a UofL record in the process. All other results are available on the Louisville site, as Louisville T&F looks geared up for continued success.

Louisville Rowing got started at the Clemson Invitational yesterday and finished with a pair of top 4 finishes in the Varsity events. The Cards will continue that event this evening and look for additional success against a decent group of squads.

Women's Golf is at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic in Athens, Georgia, where Lauren Hartlage got off to a roaring start in her opening round. Hartlage shot 6 under par in the first round and currently sits tied for second after a 1 over second round. Louisville on the whole sits in 7th place in the event. They're 24 shots off of the leader, Alabama, but are much closer to other schools in the top 5. The event ends today, and Louisville will look for a strong finish in the last two rounds.

Louisville Swimming and Diving are at the TYR Pro Series Mesa event, where they've been since Thursday. Mallory Comerford, as she is wont to do, won the 100M freestyle for Louisville's second win of the event. The event wraps up today, starting at noon local time. Louisville has had significant individual success in swimming and diving recently, and it appears to be only a matter of time before the Cards can really put something together as a team. 

Women's Soccer was in action last night taking on their final spring opponent of the year at NKU. The game was originally supposed to be held in Louisville but was changed for unknown reasons. As is typical, there is no information available from last night's game, but I thought that I would mention it anyway so that you could all remember that I love soccer.

In addition to all of the games and events I've already mentioned, also in action today are Lacrosse  and Volleyball. The Lacrosse team is taking on Virginia at noon (weather permitting), trying desperately to recover from some of the lumps they've taken this season. Despite some disappointing results, Scott Teeter has definitely shown things to be optimistic about going forward with a program that was on the ropes. Volleyball is wrapping up their spring schedule with a match against Butler tonight at 6:30. This one is at Cardinal Arena and the exhibition is free.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

For a full hour devoted to chatter about all of the sports I've just mentioned, plus utter nonsense, be sure to tune into the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour on WCHQ FM. The CCRH is every Saturday (that's today!) from 11-Noon. Paulie will man the studio today, as normal, joined by Worldwide Jeff McAdams and Mike Gilpatrick from River City Cards. No phone call for me today, but the folks in the studio will have plenty to get you through your weekend. Check out 100.9 WCHQ FM, wchqfm.com, the WCHQ App, or WCHQ FM on Facebook to hear/watch the show.

Here's a link to the Facebook Live broadcast:
THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR 4/14/18

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-