GAMEDAY -- Sunday Cardinal Couple

WBB Gameday!

Well, it's a Sunday in January, that means it must be game day for the Women's Basketball Team.  OK, it's not that regular, but it's a pretty common occurrence, to be sure.

Today they take on the Pitt Panthers at home in the KFC Yum! Center.  The men dispatched Pitt yesterday on the home hardwood after a bit of a slow start, let's hope the same slow start affliction doesn't stifle early game statistics for the women.

Many of our normal assumptions about good teams and bad in the ACC are being put the test this year, but...well...Pitt, bless their hearts, are just not a great team this year.  They haven't yet found victory in the ACC, yet, and only chalked up a thoroughly mediocre 9-5 non-conference record.  Some of those losses are to some pretty unimpressive teams, like Youngstown St. and Georgetown (this one by almost 30 points!).  WVU took the win over the Panthers by more than 30, though Pitt did keep it close with UCF.  The best wins on their schedule would be Cincinnati and Arkansas.

Maybe the biggest challenge for the Cardinals today will be to not look past this team to the big
matchup on Thursday against UConn.  Otherwise, Pitt doesn't look to be much of a real threat, looking up from the bottom of the league.

The Cards need to show up, play their game, and be present in the moment.  Play the game plan, and then, only once this game is over, start thinking about UConn.  Let's hope they continue to work on solid rebounding, which has been something of a bugaboo for this team of late, because they will absolutely need it in future games, or get risked being run off the court.

I suspect this will be an opportunity for continued development of some of the players we don't see on the court as often.  What may have even more impact on team development would be to see some more extended time for Kylee Shook, and Mykasa Robinson. The two of them have been seeing significant playing time, and you've been able to see them develop and improve, let's hope that they get extended time on the court again today to hone their craft in real-game situations, that will only help the Cards' depth heading into the later stages of the season.


Tip off today is at 2 p.m., with video available for you out-of-towners on the ACC Network Extra.

Tennis

The men's tennis team were in action in Florida against William and Mary, though as of the time of this writing, I haven't seen any results.


The women open serve at 3pm against Cincinnati here in Louisville at the Bass-Rudd Tennis Center. The women's team is 4-0 in their season so far, starting off with a bang. Let's see how well they can maintain this as the season moves on.

Vacation

On a personal note, I'll be absent from these pages for a couple of weeks as I'm heading off on a two-week vacation down under. Unfortunately, I've been saying I'll be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean during the UConn game, but if I'm doing my timezone conversions correctly, we'll be on the ground in Sydney by that point (though it will already be Feb. 1st for me).

In any case, I'll be doing my best to keep up with all Cardinals Athletics while I'm gone, and I'll be looking to the pages of Cardinal Couple and it's daily update to do that.


Think about this, however. By the time I return (Feb. 14th), the Softball and Lacrosse seasons will already be underway, that's how close Spring sports are getting.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour: Part I

"He's doing what, Edith? Awww, jeez."

Also because of vacation, yesterday was my last CCRH for a few weeks. We're hopeful that the Monk can return to fill in engineering duties while I'm gone, or perhaps someone else that has been trained on the systems at WCHQ. Just promise me, all of you all, that you won't let Paulie at the knobs, dials, and sliders.


In any case, we had a fun morning in the studio, with Mike Gilpatrick of River City Cards joining us for the hour. Case and Jared were both consumed with job duties. We had some great discussion and analysis of the play of the Women's Basketball Team, and you can learn about a couple of the contributions to science of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (he's the guy that figured out the formulas that explain why you have low tire pressure in the winter months, even without any leaks in your tires).


In any case, if you missed it, you can check it out on Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/WCHQfm/videos/392572177968848/

I'll see you in late February!


--
JMcA

(Thanks to Paulie for catching the truncated article and fixing it up a bit...here's the bit he added for the CCRH.  He picked a different digression than I did to highlight, proving, perhaps, that I need to stay more on topic)


THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR: PART II

Linked up below is THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR from yesterday. We had River City Cards editor-in-chief Mike Gilpatrick in studio with us and covered a lot of women's basketball and threw out a query on how camels got to Australia.

We came up with Clemson as our "surprise" ACC WBB squad this year, Virginia Tech as our "not ready for prime time" squad and Notre Dame as the probable ACC regular season champ. Got a take? Let us know in the comments.

Have a listen

LINK: THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR 1/26/19

JMcA