Sunday Cardinal Couple - Softball Season is a Wrap

Softball Regular Season is a Wrap

Wait, I hear you say...they have a 3rd game in the series against Pitt today at noon!  Nope, weather intervened, and the game today has been cancelled.  So the Softball regular season comes to a close on a pair of losses.

The Cards will play in post-season.  The ACC tournament brings 10 of the 12 Softball playing teams in the ACC to the tournament now.  The Cards will be the 8 seed of the tournament, which means they'll play 9 seed Syracuse in one of the "play-in" games, on Wed.  The first pitch for the UofL game will be at 1pm, with Duke and Virginia Tech to follow at 3:30.  These games will be carried on RSN (Raycom Sports Network), so look for them on Fox Sports South as a likely channel.  There is a Fox Sports Go app for devices and a companion website where you will likely find a stream of the games as well.

The Softball squad was in action yesterday against Pitt, taking the loss 10-2.  Runs came on mostly small-ball style of play.  The first run was scored in the 2nd inning on the efforts of relative youngsters.  Sophomore Celene "Play that funky music" Funke reached on an infield single, advanced on a groundout by Sophomore Caitlin "Fergy" Ferguson, and reached home on a single by Freshman pitcher/1B Kyra Snyder.  Pitt had scored a pair in the first, and would never relenquish the lead in the game.

Pitt put up another 7 runs in the 3rd inning, putting the Cards on their back feet.  The Pearsall squad didn't give up, though.  They battled for a run in the 5th inning, avoiding the run rule for the moment.  Kyra Snyder against coming through with a solid hit, whereupon Freshman Catie Barber was substituted in to pinch run.  The Junior couldn't let the youngsters have all the fun, though, Madison Cousineau walked, and Megan Hensley hit to bring Barber home.

The game would end up in a run-rule win, however, when Pitt tacked on another run in the bottom of the 5th with no outs to (unknowingly, at the time) end the regular season.

With an RPI hovering around 40, and maybe slightly lower than that after taking a pair of losses this weekend, the Cards are quite bubbly, and I'm not talking about their effervescent personalities, here (though many of the players fit that description as well).  A good showing in the conference tournament will help matters, though that will be a fairly tall task.  Looking at past play, the Cards split a weather altered, and shortened, series against Syracuse with scores of 3-2, and 3-4.  If UofL can advance, they have mighty Florida State waiting with a bye and a #1 seed.

Other Cards in Action

The only other Cards in action this weekend is Baseball who will be finishing up their series at Boston College.  The Cards lead in that series 2-0, with both wins being by fairly substantial margins (6-1, 11-3).

Let's also show some love to the UofL Marching Cards, who performed, as tradition, in the infield of the Kentucky Derby festivities playing "My Old Kentucky Home".  We want to show them some love, because NBC surely didn't, giving the Marching Cards exactly zero seconds of screen time during the performance, and by my aural experience, exactly zero mics to pick up their playing as well.  The Cardinal Singers did get good screen and audio coverage during the performance, and they did a fine job representing the University and the City.

Derby, Non-Radio and Other Odds and Ends

The Kentucky Derby was yesterday, of course.  Rain-drenched though it was, a good time seemed to be had by all.  The knuckleheads took the day off from radio due to heading various places to celebrate the municipal show-off event of the year, so there's no Facebook stream to point you to for a replay as their was no play to be replayed.  We'll be back in the studio next week with all the latest news and updates on UofL women's athletics.

Finally, I'd just like to take a moment to share my hearty congratulations to Case.  He, as he shared yesterday, passed his Fundamentals of Engineering exam as a first step on him way to be a licensed professional engineer.  I run in circles with some honest-to-goodness engineers, so I have had the opportunity to see, several times, just how much time and effort goes into preparing for this task in order to be successful.  And while my job title is "Senior Network Engineer", I tend to be careful to disclaim being a "real" engineer in the PE sense, because I know the level of rigor and standards are on a whole other level.

Congratulations, and maybe after the show next week, you can take us up to Frankfort Avenue and tell us all about the trains.

--
JMcA