Volleyball Continues Winning Ways at Wake -- Soccer ties the Irish -- MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

VOLLEY CARDS SWEEP THE DEACS

Despite my best efforts to bribe Eric the bus driver, Tillie the Tour Guide and other influential persona on the bus, they declined my offerings to remain in Winston-Salem to watch Volleyball on Sunday.

I had to follow it through Twitter and on-line stat methods as we cruised back to the "Ville" after Saturday night's football game in the same city. More on my magical adventure later...some other dignitaries were in town to do work.  



It was a successful jaunt for Louisville Volleyball as they moved to 13-3 overall and 6-0 in the ACC with a three-game sweep of the Wake Forest squad 25-17, 25-19, 25-17.

No major worries or bad play by the Cards in the sweep. Your usual suspects performed well. Melanie McHenry, Aiko Jones...plus a couple of newer names to the list of Cardinal "over the top" performers in Claire Chaussee and Nena Mbonu...prevailed.

Louisville Volleyball watching Louisville Football at Wake

Cards got up early 10-5 in the first set and stretched that to a 20-14 lead. Another name from the arsenal...Anna Stevenson...had four kills for Louisville. 

In set two -- after some closeness in score early -- The Cards pulled away eventually and held on to to win by six. 

It was all Louisville early in the final set. They took a 9-3 lead, withstood a brief comeback by Wake  and forced Wake to call their final timeout at 19-14. Aiko put the final kill on the board and the eight-point win completed the dance. 

Notre Dame next in South Bend on Wednesday for the bunch that got ice cream after their win. A nice treat for a nice feat, right? 


WOMEN'S SOCCER

After 110 minutes of kicking on the pitch, the Irish and Cards were right back were they started with a scoreless match. 

Next, a brief bit about ties. This is where I probably differ from some readers and my fellow Cardinal Couple cronies. Not the ties you wear around your neck, which I don't particularly care for either, but the ties in soccer.

Look, someone deserves to win after 110 minutes of well-played, often amazingly fantastic stops, slides, corners, free kicks and mid-field mayhem and maneuvering. Let them just employ what they already do in the post-season and have a few players line up, try their luck on the goalie and whoever does the best wins the game. And do it after one extra ten-minutes session, not two.  Agree? Disagree? 

Would you want a tie for Jeff Walz's squad?  No. Let someone win.  

In South Bend, the Irish had a slight edge in shots in the first half at 4-2 and a huge corner kick advantage at 6-1. It did them no good. Emina Ekic did her best to break open the offensive drought with two "that should have gone in" kicks on goal in the second half but one sailed high (barely) and one was goalkeeper deflected. Notre Dame ended up with a 11-7 shot advantage and 10-2 corner kick edge for the match. That's crazy. 10-2 on corners? Were the referees wearing green? 

In any event, each team earns a point in the weird soccer scoring system and they move on. #16 Louisville women's soccer is now 11-1-1 on the season and 4-1-1 in the ACC and will host #11 Duke Friday night. Come on out, it's the second-to-last home game of the year.

And, of course....it's tie-optional. 


BACK ON THE BUS

Huge props to all who endured Paulie pranks and puns on the bus trip to see the Cards outscore Wake Forest Saturday night. You're the best and I hope this collection of crazies can do it again real soon.

Things we learned: 

1) Most people do not view peanut butter as a condiment. They are wrong. 
2) Wake Forest fans are crazy nice. They gave us a ton of food to tailgate with, in addition to the massive quantities we already had.
3) Louisville Football is entertaining as hell. 


Good to be back, but, due to my own stupidity and lack of correct reckoning for the drop in temperature, I have a doozy and a dinger of a cold/sinus infection/weather change crud/whatever you want to call it and I'm amazed I got through today's article. Maybe it was foreshadowing when a few of our party got sick from bad food Friday night at a restaurant and had to stay in their hotel rooms instead of going to the game.

Excellence in Tailgating. It's what Al Parrish stands for and it was delivered this weekend.

I'm praying one of my esteemed colleagues will gallantly step up and do Tuesday's write up for me. When you check in Tuesday and you still see this article staring at you, you'll know they didn't and I am too tore up to type. 

I'm going back to bed after I cough and blow my nose for a few minutes. 

Have a marvelous Monday !

Paulie