Sunday Cardinal Couple

Senior Day Gameday for WBB

As the regular season wraps up, it's time for Senior Day for basketball.  It happens to be Senior Day for both UofL basketball teams today, in a double header at the KFC Yum! Center, but of course, our focus is on the women.  It is amusing that both teams are playing Virginia Tech, though.

The women start at noon, in order to get the arena cycled for the men's game at 6 p.m..  It's an early start, but it does bring linear ACC Network coverage along with it.

The seniors being honored are Jasmine Jones, Kylee Shook, Bionca Dunham, Jess Laemmle, and Yacine Diop.  Diop already had a Senior Day celebration when the Cards played at Pittsburgh last week.  Diop transferred to UofL from Pitt as a graduate transfer after her redshirt Junior year.  The Pitt program, showing sublime class, included Diop in their Senior Day celebrations, presenting her Pitt jersey to her.

As for the game today, VT comes in to this one tied for 3rd in the conference along with Duke and Florida State.  Two of those teams will get a double bye for the ACC tournament, the third will be left playing on Thursday.  Florida State is hosting Notre Dame, so likely will be picking up the win, Duke is playing at North Carolina.  UNC and Notre Dame are tied down in the lower portions of the ACC standings, so let's say this is likely a Duke win as well.  This means VT will need to get the win over UofL to have a fighting chance at the double bye.  So, VT will be motivated, while UofL has already locked up the overall top seed in the conference tournament, leaving less concrete motivations to play for.

During the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour yesterday, Case and I speculated on an all-senior starting lineup.  It wouldn't be merely a symbolic or honorary lineup, either.  Jones, Shook, Dunham, Diop, and Laemmle...with only the exception of Laemmle, these are either routine starters, or at least occasional starters, as is the case with Diop who has been starting while Dana Evans and Elizabeth Balogun have been healing ankle injuries, and first or second off the bench.

 If this comes to pass, it would not be Laemmle's first start as she did get to be on the court for the tip for the Northern Kentucky game.  We could easily see the all-senior starting squad, with a pretty quick substitution in of Dana Evans for Jess Laemmle and perhaps E Balogun for Diop.

A quick look at the threats from VT.  The leading scores are Aisha Sheppard, Elizabeth Kitley, and Dara Mabrey.  Kitley will stay in the paint and try her fortunes against Shook and Dunham, while Sheppard and Mabrey will be mixing up with the guards and forwards, including shots from 3pt land.  Credit to Kitley, she does have 60 blocks on the season...still trailing Shook's 82, but respectable nonetheless.

VT's Taja Cole (as a freshman at UofL) 

The steals leader for VT...folks that have been UofL fans for more than a couple of years may remember Taja Cole?  Yeah, she's at VT now and leading the team in steals.  Also she's shooting about 40% on the season, though not often from three point range, so keep an eye on her.

Again, UofL has shown that they can play and beat anyone in the country, and VT is no different.  The challenge today may be finding the motivation in playing for pride and excellence, without having any concrete rankings, or seedings on the line.  You could argue that the Cards are still seeking out a 1-seed in the NCAA tournament, and a loss would pretty much torpedo that opportunity, but there's no guarantee that even winning out with this game and an ACC tournament championship would accomplish it, either.

Tip at noon, doors open at 11am, and the game is available on streaming and linear TV on the ACC Network, and as always, you can opt for the excellent radio call by Nick and AJ.

Softball

Softball is competing in the OSU/Tulsa Invitational.  This is a bit of an odd event as it's split between Oklahoma City and Tulsa.  The past two days, the Cards have been in Oklahoma City, with today's action in Tulsa against Tulsa.

The Cards split the games yesterday, with a win over 10th ranked Oregon, but then dropped a heart breaker against top-15 OSU, making the Cowgirls (yes, they use the name "Cowgirls" for their women's teams) go an extra inning to get the job done.

In the first game, Jenna Servi singled, and was followed to the plate by Celene Funke at the top of the order, who proceeded to life one beyond the fence to get the first scores on the board in the top of the 3rd.

The Ducks would score one in the 4th, and a pair in the 5th to take the lead 3-2.  Funke would again be the hero after Caitlin Ferguson reached on a single, advanced on a sacrifice by Servi, and came home on a triple by the Funke, Queen of Triples.  Funke would then get home on a Maddy Newman hit top finish out the scoring in the top of the 7th.  Oregon would get a runner to 2nd with two outs, but Jordyn Wolfe caught a fly to right to the end the game with a Cards victory 4-3.

In the second game, OSU scored first and last for a 2-1 win.  The first came in the 2nd inning, with the Cards getting the equalizer in the 6th.

Maddy Newman would get the run for the cards by reaching with a single.  Taja Felder, pinch hitting, ripped a double, giving the speedy Newman a chance to get home to tie up the score.

In the 8th, with the International tiebreaker rule in effect, the Cards would advance Jenna Servi from her 2nd base starting point to 3rd, but not be able to get her home.  The Cowgirls would use a sacrifice bunt and a bloop of a hit to bring their player home to end the game in the bottom half of the frame.

The Cards traveled to Tulsa last night to play the Tulsa Golden Hurricane today.  Tulsa stubbornly refuses to put an "s" on Hurricane to pluralize it, so we'll go with it.

The game is at 1 p.m., and streaming is available via the Tulsa Hurricane site:

https://tulsahurricane.com/watch/?Live=5881&type=Live

Tennis

Women's tennis is up at Syracuse, after a pretty good non-conference start, they dropped their first
two conference competitions against NC State, and Miami.

The ACC does pretty well in women's tennis, with even the bottom teams in the standings having overall 9-4 and 7-4 records, Boston College and Virginia Tech respectively.  NC State stands in second behind and undefeated UNC squad, so no shame in that loss.  Miami is middle of the pack, 3-2 in conference, 6-4 overall.

Syracuse comes in to the competition mid-top in the ACC with a 2-1 conference record, and 7-2 overall.

This matchup starts at 11 a.m. and is on the ACC Network Extra streaming.

Lacrosse

Lacrosse is still looking for their first win in the ACC, and got close yesterday against Virginia Tech. 

I really think about half of the VT student body must be in Louisville this weekend.

The Hokies would win this one 8-7, but the Cards rallied to make it very competitive.

Rachel Florek would tie her program record saves stat of 17 in a game, and pairs of goals from Ally Hall, Allegra Catalano, and Hannah Morris, along with a single from Paige Richbourg, weren't enough to stop VT.

Ally Hall would make an impact on the scoreboard first, but VT then went on a 3-0 run.  Hannah Morris would score her pair, tying the game at 3, but VT would sneak another in just before the 1st half buzzer with 11 seconds left to take the 4-3 lead into the break.

VT stretched that lead to start the 2nd half with a pair of unanswered goals and would then go on to pull further ahead to 8-4.  UofL would score the last three of the game, and have a couple of chances in the final minute of the game, but couldn't find the back of the net.


SCOTT TEETER/RACHEL FLOREK POST-GAME INTERVIEW:  https://youtu.be/M0p_gj9r71Q

UofL will be back in action Tuesday against Longwood at the Louisville Lacrosse Stadium at 1 in the afternoon.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

And, of course, as mentioned earlier, Case and I convened at the Northeast branch of the Louisville Free Public Library for this week's edition of the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour.

We covered basketball, softball, and touched a bit on spring soccer play along with a slideshow of Jared's shots from their latest indoor scrimmage.  I managed to sneak in a brief update about Volleyball with their announcement of their spring schedule.

You can check out the show below.