Tennis Starts the Spring with Familiar Opening -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Tennis Opens Season with Sweeps

Louisville women's tennis opened their season officially yesterday when they played host to North Alabama for a pair of matches. The Cards won the first 7-0 and the second 5-0 for an all around drubbing of the Lions. This was the first time that Louisville had ever played the same team in a double-header and head coach Mark Beckham was not entirely thrilled with the Cards' performance in the second match. Beckham said after the match that the team "didn't give [him] too many things to be upset about" but that "it's difficult to play a double header." About the team's issues, Beckham said, "They lost that focus and, I don't want to say motivation, but lost that just a little bit." Overall he was happy that the Cards got two wins and two sweeps to open their season.

If this sounds like a familiar January story, it kind of is. Louisville opened last season 9-0 before crashing through the conference season and finished the year 10-15 with just two conference wins. The year before, the Cards were 12-1 to open the season before the collapse led them to a 13-13 record, again with just two conference wins. Those season finishes have to be on Beckham's mind as another year gets underway. His frustration with a lack of focus is probably less about the actual matches against North Alabama and more about what focus lapses in the future may lead to throughout the season. Louisville has not won more than three conference matches since joining the ACC, and every year opens as though that fact will change. We'll see this year if the team can hold it together as the competition grows tougher.  Louisville will get back underway next week when they take on Ball State.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

We're pushed into a different time slot today. Due to some scheduling conflicts, we three (Jeff, Paulie, and I) won't have access to our studio space until later this afternoon. We'll still be bringing you the show, as we strive to do every week, but we will miss our 11AM slot this week. Tune in to the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour today at 2:30 PM, instead. As always, you'll be able to listen to the broadcast at any time following the live show by checking out the full episode replay on Youtube. We're still working on getting the podcast out and will hopefully be able to present that as an option soon. We're also doing our best to get the audio issues ironed out, and as we become more familiar with a repeat studio, we'll continue to make the show better however we can. Check out the Cardinal Couple Youtube channel at this link and check back for the link to the live broadcast when it becomes available. You can also access the live broadcast directly from the main channel.

Let's see if this works to embed the live stream in the article directly.    Hopefully this will be live at 2:30pm EST.  -- JMcA

Apparently the answer is, no, it doesn't work, at least currently, and it's not a trivial fix.  Puts it on the todo list.  -- JMcA

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-