Pitt today -- W Tennis downs SEMO St -- Swimming at the YUM -- Batter Up Brunch -- SUNDAY CARDINAL COUPLE.

Pitt Comes to the Yum!

0-7 in conference, 3-15 overall.  Honestly, and trying to be a respectful as possible, that may be about all you need to know about Pitt before today's later afternoon matchup.

The Panthers come in with wins only against Central Connecticut State, Fairleigh Dickinson, and Ole Miss.  UCF beat them by 14, Georgetown by 10, and Duquesne by 19.  None of these are strong teams in overall NCAA play.  In conference, loses have come by margins of eight to UNC, eight to Notre Dame, nine to Boston College, 12 to Virginia Tech, eight to Clemson, 18 to Syracuse, and to NC State?  Well, that one may have gotten an R rating for being just gruesome.  The Wolfpack ran off with a 22-0 run to start the 3rd quarter and won the overall quarter 30-4 on their way to a 88-44 finish.

The only main statistical category that Pitt is beating it's opponents is rebounding.  They do have that edge on both the defensive and offensive side, though the offensive rebounding margin is razor thing on the season.  Aysia Bugg is the scoring leader, averaging 13 per game, close behind is a committee of Amber Brown, Dayshanette Harris, and Gabbie Green, all scoring between 9.9 and 9.5 points per game.  Starting in the post, look for Cara Judkins, she's good for the highest scoring percentage on the team, but it's only 4.5 per game.  At 6'2", I don't think she'll provide a huge challenge for Kylee or Bionca.

Wins are what is looked for in the season, and this should be a relatively easy one.  I hope that Coach Walz can use this one for some teaching time with a little less pressure on getting the team into the winning side of the scoreboard.  We've all watched and cheered as this team has started to "figure it out", but there's still quite a ways to go on that journey.  While the level of competition plays into some of that, it can also be nice to have a less pressure filled game to give players a chance to make mistakes, play through them, and learn from the experiences.

A feel-good romp should make for a fun time in the KFC Yum! Center this afternoon.  It's a 4pm tip and is on the ACC Network, so there is no need for streaming today.

Tennis Back in Action

South East Missouri State comes to Louisville for a double-header today vs Mark Beckham's Tennis squad.

I haven't caught up much with the Tennis team this year, but they are transfer-laden, with seven of the 10 players on the roster listed as having transferred from another University, and also have a significant international flair, having a pair of Argentinians, a Russian, a Canadian (Toronto), and a Bosnian.

The first matchup starts with the doubles as always at 10am, and the second matchup will be at 1pm.  Live streaming of the matches should be available at:

https://gocards.com/sports/2018/2/2/louisville-tennis-live-video.aspx

At the time of this writing, it appears only one of the six courts actually has live video up and running.

Swimming and Diving

It was a the Battle of the Bluegrass, pool party style, yesterday at the Ralph Wright Natatorium.  Our intrepid photographer, Jared was in attendance early, before scooting over to the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour recording.  All reports was that it was an absolute jam packed house, with at least parts of 5 or 6 other sports teams in attendance to cheer on their colleagues against the Wildcats.

The teams split in the results, with the Kentucky women getting the best of the Louisville women with total scores of 160.5 to 139.5.  The Louisville men managed a similar margin of the Wildcats with a total score of 165 to 135.

On the women's side, we got wins from Arina Openysheva in the 100 free, Christiana Regenauer in the 100 fly, and Lainey Visscher in the 50 free.  The three of them, plus Casey Fanz narrowly edged out the wildcats to get the win in the 400 free relay.  The margin of victory was less than two tenths of a second in a nearly three and a half minute long race.

In (well, mostly above) the diving end of the pool, Molly Fears was just edged in the 1 meter board competition, but did come out on top in the 3 meter.

You can see more of Jared's pictures from the event below.

The Swim and Dive team will be back in action Friday with Indiana coming to the Ralph Wright.


Softball Batter Up Brunch

Louisville Softball held their pre-season Batter Up Brunch at the PNC Club yesterday and Paulie and Sonja were there to attend and catch the words.

Sean Moth handled the P.A. duties in his always informative fashion

A great time it was. Here are some audio links from the event:  Vince Tyra made some opening remarks, Alicja Wolny delivered the keynote speaker address and there was a great video about the squad that the attendees got to see while they dined. Celene Funke did a Q&A with selected members of the squad, including Eden Mayo, Catlin Ferguson, Chardonnay Harris and Holly Aprile ended the program with her comments about the event, team and upcoming season.

It was a splendid time for all, and a silent auction was also available for attendees.

THE WORDS:

HOLLY APRILE PRE-BANQUET WITH PAULIE

INTERVIEW WITH CELENE FUNKE

INTERVIEW WITH KEYNOTE SPEAKER WITH WOLNY

VINCE TYRA REMARKS

ALICJA WOLNY KEYNOTE ADDRESS

SEAN MOTH INTRODUCES THE SENIORS

HOLLY APRILE'S WORDS FOR THE ATTENDEES

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

It's a little bit of two steps forward and one step back.  We had four of us in the recording booth at the Louisville Northeast Regional Library branch, and with the added input, I found a new technical glitch.  Poor Jared, the audio interface they have had the 3rd and 4th channels turned off.  Case, Paulie, and I started on channels one and two, plus a separate USB mic, meaning for the first part of the show, Jared is awfully hard to hear.  I did give him my mic to use as I struggled to find the cause of the problem (and you can tell in my extremely distracted responses to prompts from Paulie).  We did find, and fix, the problem after the show.  So this continues to be a learning process.  In any case, you can check out the show below.

--
JMcA