Sunday Cardinal Couple

Basketball Gameday

Notre Dame comes to town this afternoon to take on the Cardinals at the KFC Yum! Center.

This, of course, is not your usual Notre Dame team.  Currently sitting at 5-8 in conference, and 10-15 overall, Muffet McGraw is having a very tough year this year.  Of course, this is ACC basketball, so you never want to take any team for granted, and whatever gripes some in CardNation may have about McGraw, she is a coach that tends to get performance out of her teams.  Sometimes, as now, it's just that getting good performance out of a team, for example, when the top six players on the team graduated last year, may mean getting them to a 10-15 record, instead of what might have been considerably worse.

The Irish spread the points around fairly well, with 5 averaging in double digits:  Destinee Walker with 14.6, Katlyn Gilbert with 13.8, Sam Brunelle with 13.4, Anaya Peoples with 12.6, and Mikayla Vaughn with 10.4.  Brunelle is the leading shot blocker with 26 on the year...and Kylee Shook chuckles.  The team loses pretty much every statistical category with the exception of two that really are pretty significant.  They have  better field goal percentage, but worse 3pt field goal percentage and a better free throw percentage.

Peoples is out, a torn labrum, but the others are active. 

The game starts at 3pm, and is on the ACC Network, so no need to stream if you don't want to.  It is the pink game for the season, and reports are that Jeff Walz will be sporting some nifty white Adidas sneaks with pink stripes for the game.

Softball Gameday

Participating in the ACC/Big Ten Softball Challenge, the Cards are continuing to struggle a bit.

Hosted by UNC in Chapel Hill, the Big Ten representatives are Michigan and Wisconsin.

Michigan is a perennial power in Softball, and Wisconsin isn't too shabby.  So far on the weekend, the Cards dropped their first decisions against Michigan and Wisconsin on Friday, but did get the win over the Badgers yesterday, 3-2.

It was a slow start against Wisconsin yesterday, with no one crossing the plate for three innings.  The Cards would get on the board first in 4th inning.  Sisters Cassady and Carmyn Greenwood both got hits to get on base, setting up Maddy Newman to bring them both home for a pair of runs.  Wisconsin would answer with a pair of their own in the bottom of the 4th, but then would get no more for the rest of the game.  It could've been a lot worse for the Cards in the 4th, after Wisconsin had scored their two, one of which was a result of an error, the Badgers had runners on third and only one out, Jenna Servi caught a line drive single up the third base line, and stepped on the base before the runner was able to get back to tag for an unassisted double play.

Servi would continue the excellence with a double in the 5th, advanced on a sacrifice ground out by
Caitlin Ferguson, and score on a hit by Cassady Greenwood.

3-2 would be the final score, with the other two and a half innings in the game going scoreless.

The Cards will see Michigan again today and try to get to a .500 record for the weekend.  That's a tall order against the 8/11 ranked Wolverines.  This one kicks off at 10am, and no video links have been found for these games.

Tennis

Also in action yesterday, the tennis squad against Bowling Green State.  The Falcons came down to Bass Rudd and didn't see much success against the Mark Beckham UofL squad.  The final tally was 6-1.  UofL got the doubles point with a win at 2 of the 3 courts.  Raven Neely and Maia Haumuller got the win at court one, while Rhea Verma and Diana Wong would get the win at court 3.

Haumuller would sit out the singles, but all of the rest of the doubles victors would pick up points in their singles matches.  Nikolina Jovic would replace Haumuller and get a singles point, while Jelena Vujanic would recover from her doubles loss with Dina Chaika, to get a singles point as well.

Lacrosse

The Denver Pioneers visits the Louisville Lacrosse Stadium and would overwhelm the Cards.  Denver is 9th ranked, so there's no shame in this one.  I was unable to be in attendance for this one or watch online as I was dealing with some family matters, but Paulie was there, and perhaps will contribute his thoughts and analysis.

The Cards did get some good scoring with a pair by Caroline Blalock, and one each from Alex McNicholas, Paige Richbourg, Ally Hall 1, and Shayla Scanlan.  Louisville did well on the draw control with a margin of 13-10 in the game, although the best part of that was in the first half where the Cards had a 8-3 draw control margin, but lost out to the Pioneers 7-5 in the 2nd half.

Louisville was unable to capitalize on any of their seven free position shots in the game...that's always going to hurt your chances.  Credit to Rachel Florek in goal for 13 save compared to Denver's five, keeping the score from being a lot worse.

Paulie thoughts: I asked most of my questions about the match in the post-game interview I did with Coach Teeter. The runs Denver went on to end the first half and begin the second half were enough to get them the "W"... Thanks to Jared Anderson for the video work and some of today's pictures. 

Scott Teeter postgame link:  LINK: https://youtu.be/ZW0kguOcISE

This is a very young Louisville squad, with more than half of the team being freshman.  It's year two of a total rebuilding effort by Scott Teeter, and there is more and better to come, for sure.

CCRH Silent Yesterday

Due to scheduling issues both with the facility and with people, we couldn't get in the studio for a Cardinal Couple Radio Hour episode.  The library has had a program going on that has prevented us from scheduling the studio on Saturdays, but that program has apparently finished and scheduling should be easier going forward.

Tragic Volleyball News

If you're in the Louisville area, you may be aware of this, but some tragic news hit the volleyball
community Friday.

Four people, Lesley Prather, Rhyan Prather, Carrie McCaw, and Kacey McCaw, were killed in a car crash in St. Louis.  Lesley and Carrie were mothers with their 10 and 11 year old daughters, Rhyan and Kacey, on their way to Kansas City to a club volleyball tournament when a truck towing a generator crossed the center median of I-64, apparently rolled over the cable barrier, and struck the minivan the four were traveling in.  The women were pronounced dead on-site and the two girls were taken to a local hospital where they succumbed to their injuries.

The girls played for the KIVA under 12 Red team coached by UofL volleyball alumna Courtney Robison-Dixon, Claire Hellman, and UK volleyball alumna Jackie Napper.

If you know the Louisville volleyball community, then you know that it is close knit, and there are particularly strong ties between KIVA and the UofL volleyball program.  Lesley Prather was an alumna of the UofL Volleyball program and was the older sister to UofL Volleyball Director of Operations, Sarah Petkovic, and there has been a steady parade of KIVA players coming through the UofL program, with Alexis Hamilton and Alexa Hendricks being former KIVA players on the current UofL roster.  Lesley was a professional firefighter for the City of Louisville.

I did not ever have the opportunity to meet the Prathers or the McCaws, but I did see Lesley around L&N Arena on several occasions...usually with a girls volleyball team in tow.

Obviously this is a tragic situation and my thoughts are with the many families and communities affected.

-- 

JMcA