WBB Falls to Florida State
In a testament to the high expectations on UofL Women's Basketball, the loss yesterday to 4th seed Florida State, a top 25 team, can only be considered a disappointment. FSU advanced to the championship of the ACC tournament after a down-to-the-wire battle against the Cards, with a final score of 62-60. There they will meet NC State who advanced over Boston College.
The Cards started out with shooting woes, shooting only 23.5% from the field in the 1st quarter, resulting in an 18-10 FSU lead. The Cards would turn it around in the 2nd quarter, however and come roaring back with 58.3% shooting, including a perfect 4-4 from beyond the arc. The 2nd half would somewhat repeat the pattern, with a not-awful-but-also-not-great 35.7% shooting in the 3rd quarter, a quarter that FSU won 18-13. The Cards would improve to 50% in the 4th quarter to close down that five point lead to the two point winning margin.
Despite Case's suggestion during the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour yesterday that the culprit would be found to be turnovers, the Cards actually won in that stat 12-15. To be fair to Case's assessment, the comment came as we had watched the end of the game in the studio and FSU did win the turnover stat in the 2nd half. Overall, though most of the stats were very similar between the two teams. The biggest discrepancy is probably found in the rebounding stats, and specifically in offensive rebounds which the Seminoles won 14-11 with the result showing up on the scoreboard in 2nd chance points with a 15-7 advantage to the women from Tallahassee.
For individual contributors, Dana Evans and Jazmine Jones had 16 and 15 respectively, with Kylee Shook and Yacine Diop reach double-digits with 10 apiece. Bionca Dunham rounds out the significant scorers with 6. 'Kasa Robinson had a bucket, and Liz Dixon went 1 for 2 from the charity stripe to round out the scorers for the Cards.
Overall, I would call this a lackluster game overall, with moments of brilliance within in.
The Cards, of course, will get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, likely as a 2-seed in the Ft. Wayne Regional. As a top-16 team, which is still all but completely assured, the Cards will host 1st and 2nd round games at the KFC Yum! Center. There had been hope that UofL could creep back up into a one seed, but this loss almost certainly forecloses on that possibility.
I believe we will be getting a Paulie special report from Greensboro with his thoughts and recap of the game as well as the Boston College vs NC State game.
Softball
The Softball Cards are playing the home opener weekend at Ulmer and picked up a good win over Northwestern yesterday, 3-1. Coming off of a heartbreaking 1-2 loss in 8 innings against Illinois on Friday, the Cards were eager for a win.
Jordyn Wolfe and Carmyn Greenwood were the scoring heroes of this one. The scoring came late in the game for the Cards, not getting anything on the scoreboard until the bottom of the 5th. Wolfe reached with a double, and advanced to 3rd on a Jenna Servi groundout. Wolfe would be joined on the basepaths when Madison Ciaccio would draw a walk. Carmyn Greenwood would rip a double to bring Wolfe and Ciaccio home for the 2-1 lead.
The other run for the Cards came in the next inning. Caitlin Ferguson got hit by a pitch, and would use her basepath speed to make it home on a Wolfe double.
Chardonnay Harris gets the win in the circle for this one, and did so in style, limiting Northwestern to only a pair of hits.
The Red and Black Challenge will wrap up today with 4 games at Ulmer. Oakland and Northwestern will start off the day at 10am, UofL will get another shot at Illinois at around 12:15 and then will take a break while Evansville gets to have a run at the Illini. The Cards will wrap up the Challenge with a scheduled 4:45 start against the Purple Aces of Evansville.
The weather today should be glorious for a day out at Ulmer, come out and enjoy the sun and some great softball.
Cardinal Couple Radio Hour
Case and I did pop into the library to put out another edition of the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour. We might call this one, the distracted edition.
We were on the stream live during the last quarter or so of the WBB game, and for much of the Softball game yesterday, both events that we were trying to stay on top of a little bit while we talked. We had WBB streaming in the studio, as well.
My apologies for a long blank section at the beginning, I just plain forgot to switch to the live audio on my streaming software. Audio starts at about 3:30. I'll look into trimming the no-audio video at the beginning out, but that will be a bit of a learning process to do that, so bear with me while I figure it out.
We had a good discussion, accompanied by some great photos from Jared from 3 different sports this week. We covered WBB, Lacrosse, and Softball. Check it out below.
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JMcA
No reason to hang are heads cards battle hard i'm so proud of this team. merv Go Cards!
ReplyDeleteCertainly a disappointing loss, to me, it just seemed as if we didn't "playlikelouisville".
ReplyDeleteReally would have liked to see us win both the regular season and tournament championships, but a win or loss doesn't affect our seeding or regional for the NCAA tournament.
Was gonna be the #2 in Ft Wayne regardless.
Regroup, refresh, and get ready for a deep run in the upcoming tournament.
GO CARDS!!!
Baylor lost today to unranked Iowa State. Mulkey managed to loose her vest after a foul by Baylor with .1 left during a time camera not on her.
ReplyDeleteWhined and cried for minutes to referees. Referees let her stall out the game for far too long while Iowa S waiting to shoot free throws. Nothing changes about Baylor.
That sure sounds familiar. It was a questionable foul but somehow when Kim reacts it seems so over the top. I don’t see that in weird “I’m gonna cry” whiny facial reaction in other coaches male or female. Good dose of humble pie for Baylor.
DeleteRather than devote a separate article to the loss against FSu, I'll suggestt you read Jeff's article today and just offfer these three points:
ReplyDelete1) The Cards did this to themselves. They battled back, had a chance to win and couldn't convert to tie it at the end. Two shots at a basket. The ball didn't go in.
2) Poor stsrt. At 7-0, Louisville looked horrible early. This has been a team that hasn't been struggling early until Saturday. Don't know what was going on, but, there was discord n the court.
3) Kylee hit a couple of huge threes, then sits. I'm still shaking my head over that, and the quizzical explanation Jeff Walz gave for it in the post-game presser. This is the defensive player of the year in the conference and gets 20 minutes?
paulie
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I only watched the 2nd half. Seems like you make a good point about Kylee’s minutes Paulie. Was she being beaten to the ball on rebounds or something? Peculiar for sure. Walz has done a marvelous job blending these kids together. I didn’t particularly enjoy watching many of their games this year but in an overall weaker conference year the team has done well. It’s not easy getting Dixon, Balogun, Diop, and the rest of team to play as a unit. Tons of new faces all highly unique styles. The team just didn’t click well overall this year. They won but they were missing something. I still think a final four is doable but so is a sweet 16 early exit.
ReplyDeleteWalz on Shook in the post game presser:
DeleteQ. Coach, you went smaller for a lot of this game with Kylee getting 20 minutes. Talk about the rationale behind that?
JEFF WALZ: What we tried to do -- the one point -- she had two fouls, got those two and kind of for a little bit they called a foul on Yaya when they put it to the scorer's table I thought they said 21. So I thought that was Kylee's third. So we took her out and we went with Bea and they went with four guards also and we were having a hard time trying to match-up with two bigs in the game. I thought Bionca was doing a nice job defensively for us again.
paulie
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