Volleyball Receives NCAA Bid -- FIeld Hockey and Softball Results -- MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 

VOLLEY BALL GETS FIRST ROUND BYE IN NCAA TOURNAMENT

The NCAA had their selection show for the 48-team NCAA Tournament yesterday and the Louisville Cardinals squad received a first-round bye and will open action April 15th in Omaha against the winner of the San Diego State/Texas A&M Corpus Christi first round game. 

Louisville received the #11 seed overall in the 48-team  bracket and was one of four ACC teams to get "into the dance" , joining Georgia Tech, Notre Dame and Pitt. Florida State did not receive a bid. 

The Cards won the ACC title with a 14-2 record overall and a 12-2 ACC mark

No silly landmark names for the four regions, the Cards are in the same region as #3 Minnesota, #6 Washington, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh and Dayton. Interesting that they'd group three of the four ACC NCAA participants in the same region. All matches will be held in Omaha. 

If the Cards get past the second round, they could face either Washington, Towson or Dayton. 

Washington is the #1 seed overall, Kentucky is #2 and other commonwealth of Kentucky schools participating are Morehead State and Western Kentucky.  

Best of luck to our VolleyCards in Omaha, the early round matches will be shown online at ESPN3 and Louisville is scheduled for a noon, April 15th opening volley. 

FIELD HOCKEY TAKES 1-0 WIN OVER SYRACUSE

#5 Louisville faced off against #8 Syracuse yesterday at Trager Stadium and the Cards got a 1-0 win in overtime over the Orange. 

It was Mercedes Pastor connecting in the sixth minute of the extra session to improve the FH Cards to  12-4 overall and 2-2 in the ACC. Pastor took a feed from Charlie Van Oirshott and drove it into the right side of the cage for the sudden victory win in the 7X7 overtime format. 

The win was a bit of revenge for the Cards, who fell to Syracuse 2-1 in Syracuse back in the fall. 

"I'm proud of the performance of the team, from front to back." Justine Sowry stated after the match. "A game like that is going to ebb and flow, and momentum is going to shift, but we stayed committed to our game plan We wanted to work hard and have poise on the ball and communicate, because of their pressure". 

The Cards got nine shots off in the 65 minutes, five on goal -- while Syracuse attempted just two, none on goal. 

 A weird situation in the fourth quarter when the Syracuse goalkeeper was issued a green card and had to leave the game. The Cards appeared to get a successful shot in the net after that from Katie Schneider, but the officials ruled the attempt was too high and the goal was disallowed.   

The Stick Girls return to action Saturday when they travel to Durham to face Pam Bustin's Duke squad.

SOFTBALL FALLS 9-7 TO PITT 

A three-run homer by Pitt in the bottom of the seventh gave Pitt the walk-off win against UofL yesterday in Pittsburgh. 

Louisville had built a 7-4 lead in the top of the sixth when Jennifer Leonhardt and Taylor Roby crushed homers against the Panthers, but Pitt cut that back to a one-run lead in the bottom of the sixth and then touched Roby (5-6) for the winning blow after the Cards failed to score in the top of the seventh.

With the loss, the Cards fall to 12-15 overall and 6-10 in the ACC. Pitt goes to 10-20 and 5-15 in conference play. 

The two squads will wrap up the four-game series at it again today at noon and you can follow the action on ACCNX. 

NCAA WBB TOURNAMENT FINAL AND PICK 'EM RESULTS. 

In case you missed the NCAA WBB Championship game last night, Stanford survived a last-second three point attempt by Arizona's Aari McDonald and escaped with a 54-53 win over the Wildcats. 

It was a dramatic finish to what was an exciting tournament, despite Louisville getting eliminated in the Elite Eight.. We saw Geno's squad look un-UConn-like against the AZ Wildcats and we saw got to see Kim Mulkey experiment with mask adjustments mid-post-game interview.

Stanford grabbed an early 16-8 first quarter lead, but Arizona win the final three quarters. Yeah, A PAC-12 Final was a bit anti-climatic, but...that's the way the ball bounces. 

Hailey Jones provided the winning bucket plus one for the Cardinal, putting them up 54-50. She led Stanford in scoring with 17 points, McDonald led all scores with 22

In our CARDINAL COUPLE NCAA TOURNAMENT "PICK 'EM", I believe Kenny S., edged me out for the title. I'll let Bracket Czar Jared go into that more tomorrow,  Kenny did successfully pick Stanford to win it all. 

Have a meaningful Monday!

paulie