Rivers Earns Soccer Honors -- A Look into Field Hockey -- WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Rivers Earns Top Drawer Soccer Award

Brooklynn Rivers was named Top Drawer Soccer Player of the Week.  The junior scored game-winning goals against Notre Dame and Syracuse last week, giving her four game-winners this year.

Rivers put up the first goal in the middle of the second half against Notre Dame en route to a 2-0 victory Thursday night.  She then scored the only goal of a 1-0 victory against Syracuse with nine seconds remaining on Sunday.  With seven goals and four assists on the year, Rivers is tied with freshman Maisie Whitsett for 18 points, most on the team.

Case is our women's soccer expert and can give a much better in-depth analysis of the matches, a look at how the season is going, and the reason behind the success.  I'll leave Case to break it down for us in the near future.

Field Hockey Reaches Midpoint in Season

Although the season just started a month ago (the home opener was one month ago exactly), field hockey has already reached their midway point in the season.  With 18 regular season games, at least one guaranteed ACC Tournament game, and hopefully at least one NCAA Tournament game, this season is quickly flying by.

Currently ranked eighth in the country, Louisville is 7-3 on the year with a conference record of 1-2.  They're coming off a weekend that included a disappointing 4-2 loss at a then-unranked Wake Forest team and then a 4-0 blowout victory against Appalachian State.

The Cards could easily be sitting at 8-2 or 9-1 on the season.  Louisville collapsed in the second half of the home opener against Ohio State.  They then fell a t Wake Forest, in their worst victory of the season following a poor defensive outing.

Louisville is averaging nearly two goals per game while allowing 1.40 goals per game.  Erica Cooper leads the team with six goals, four of them coming in the most recent game.  She is followed closely by Bethany Russ' four goals.  Six other Cardinals have either one or two goals.

On the defensive end, Ayeisha McFerran continues to show how great of a goalkeeper she can be.  The senior has 31 saves for a .689 save percentage while limiting opponents to 14 goals in 10 games.

McFerran is 20th in the country on win-loss percentage at .700.  She's 18th on goals against average on the year.  She;s 46th on save percentage, a stat that dropped following the Wake Forest match.

The final eight regular season games feature four ranked opponents: #15 Virginia, #4 Duke, #11 Syracuse, #22 Albany.  Only two of the remaining opponents are not top 40 in RPI.  Under Coach Sowry's leadership this team can easily win out if they put their minds to it.

Louisville hits the road for matches against Virginia and Ball State before returning home to host Michigan State on October 7.  Women's soccer, volleyball, and softball will all have games at home on Floyd Street at the same time.


On a side note, congrats to the women's soccer counterparts, the #6 Louisville men's soccer team, on their 2-1 victory at Georgetown last night.  The game-winner came in a time where the Cards were down 10-v-11.

Happy Wednesday and Go Cards - Jared -