We've Got Brackets - Sunday Cardinal Couple

2 ACC Tournaments Set

Soccer

The women's soccer bracket is set for 8 teams, with the first round of games, the quarterfinals, being hosted at campus sites.  Of course, Jared covered some of this Friday, after the last games of the regular season wrapped up Thursday night (or got cancelled, in one case).

Thanks to a confluence of a variety of game interactions, despite losing to NC State in the final game of the season, the Cards end up in the 4th seed, one point ahead of NC State.  With an 8 team tournament, that means we get an instant rematch at Lynn Stadium this afternoon.  One wonders whether the Wolfpack even traveled home, or just stayed in town for the weekend.

Just watching the play Thursday one could tell that these two teams were closely matched.  UofL will have the services of Niamh Nelson back, after serving a one game suspension on a red card call in the Miami game.  The Cards squad has gotten a little dinged up, with Maisie Whitsett leaving the game with a minor injury and Callie McKinney with a seemingly more serious one.  We hope to see Whitsett back, but aren't expecting to see McKinney in action.

In other parts of the brackets, UNC unsurprisingly took the top seed, with Notre Dame sneaking in as the 8th seed.  Florida State, also unsurprisingly, took the 2 seed and will host Clemson in Tallahassee.  Duke will have the shortest trip of the tournament, just heading up to UVA for the 3-6 matchup.

NC State here at Lynn kicks off at 3 p,m. today on the main ACC Network.

Field Hockey

We also have brackets for the ACC Field Hockey Championship.  All of these games will be played starting Thursday at noon with UofL looking at another instant rematch against Syracuse.  Boston College will be hosting this whole tournament, so expect some chilly weather for it.

UofL lost their final game of the regular season against Syracuse.  The Cards did get out to a lead with a goal in the 2nd quarter, but Syracuse would work their way back to the victory with the tying goal in the 3rd quarter.  The game would go to a 7v7 overtime where Syracuse would take the win.

With only 7 teams participating in ACC Field Hockey, all of them make the tournament, with the top seed getting a first round bye.

Again, we see UNC sitting atop the standings, so UofL, with the 5 seed in the 4-5 game will be
looking to meet up with UNC.  In the other half of the bracket, we against see a 6th seed Duke matching up against a 3rd seed UVA.  The 2-7 seed matchup sees Wake Forest looking for an upset over Boston College.

Volleyball  

The ACC leaderboard in Volleyball is a jumble.  Pitt, of course, sits out in front with an 11-0 record, but after that, it's a mess.  Florida State holds a slight edge with a 9-3 record over the 3rd play tie pack, but the pack all has a game in hand over Florida State, so...who knows what comes out of that.  That 3rd place tie is currently held by Louisville, Notre Dame, Boston College, and Georgia Tech all with 8-3 records.

Volleyball matches up against Syracuse today with a 1 p.m. first serve in New York.  That should give you time to watch the match, and hopefully switch over before the start to the Soccer game at 3.

This match really shouldn't be much of a challenge for the Cards.  Syracuse is down near the bottom of the conference standings at 4-7, although that, too, is a monstrous tie-up with Duke, Clemson, Miami, and NC State also sitting at 4-7.

Most of the offense for Syracuse comes from Polina Shemanova, a 6'0" outside from St. Petersburg, Russia.  Also be on the lookout for Ella Saada, 6'1" from Kfar Masaryk, Israel, also on the outside.  The offense will be run by Elena Karakasi, a 6'0" setter out of Athens, Greece.  Yes, Coach Leonid Yellin is continuing his heavily international recruiting ways, and has more international players on his roster than domestic, which is not uncommon for him.

The Cards will be looking for a confidence builder and a good match to build a new rhythm as they have struggled after the loss of Melanie McHenry.  They have the talent and depth to step up and play at the top levels of the ACC, but the loss of McHenry seems to have taken a hit on their confidence to play at the level that we know they are capable of.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

We were on the air at the magnificent media mansion on Mellwood again yesterday.  It's always a joy to Paige Sherrard join us on the air as we lead into basketball season, particularly since, otherwise it would've only been Paulie and myself.

The show did start off on a bit of a down note, as we shared the news of WCHQ's imminent closure.

We did go on to talk about the Women's Basketball Luncheon and discuss some of the upcoming season.  We spent some time on volleyball, and some quick recap of Soccer and Field Hockey.

The Facebook Live link for replay of the show is available at:

https://www.facebook.com/WCHQfm/videos/2657983584421781/

CCRH Future

And finally, a note about the future of the CCRH.  I think it's fair for me speak for the group in saying that the CCRH will certainly live on beyond the new year.  Obviously we will need to find a new facility and setup to handle what is typically 3 or 4 of us on mics to get good audio quality.

I have a line on a location that has a podcasting equipment setup, and I am investigating our ability to make use of it.  So far it looks positive.  The setup currently has 3 mics and a mixing board and is set up to be tied into a computer (BYOC), which isn't a challenge for us with Case, Jared, and I all being quite technologically proficient.  Adding another mic to their setup, which we'll need to do in order to have our full complement of 4, won't be technically challenging to do at all.

I'm also experimenting with a software package called OBS (Open Broadcast Software) which is typically used for live video streaming, frequently for game streaming and other live events, and YouTube Live streaming.  While we'll probably approach the future of CCRH more as a podcast form, we do believe that the live aspect of the show is something that we don't want to leave behind, so I hope that we'll be able to work out the inevitable kinks that will arise and work out a live stream format.

We may not have live video of us sitting around talking into mics right out of the gate, but really, how exciting is that?  I hope that, by having a little more direct control over our streaming and production tooling that we'll be able to more easily incorporate more multi-media forms into the show.  We'll see how much effort is involved in that as we move forward.

WCHQ has been an absolutely wonderful home for the CCRH, but moving to a more of a podcast'ish form does free us from some minor constraints that we had with being on an actual radio station...the need to fit neatly into an hour long block, for example...maybe summer shows will end up being a bit shorter when there's less material to talk about, while spring, fall, and winter shows may go longer, particularly during the "season overlaps" particularly in the fall.  With less constraint (and WCHQ has always been super forgiving of us running a few minutes long, which we do on a regular basis) on the length of shows, maybe we bring back more of post-game audio (and maybe video!), that we haven't put in the shows of late because it cut down on the time available for recap and analysis.

Ultimately, moving to more of a podcast form, should allow us to open up the shows a bit .

 Please let us know...comments, email, the usual...if there are ways that we could make the CCRH even better.  We're in a situation where change has to happen, let's try to make it change for the better.

We will certainly miss WCHQ, it largely birthed the CCRH, so it will always have a place in our hearts and minds, but we hope that we can take the opportunity to make the CCRH even better.

We'll have eight shows left on the station, as far as we know. We'll do the best we can.

Just a final reminder, the closing of WCHQ will not affect anything we do here at the website in daily operations, etc.

-- 

JMcA