USA Basketball, High School Volleyball, and Olympics -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 USA U23 3x3 Team Announced

Shortly after Jared's article about Payton Verhulst's USAWBB involvement went up yesterday, news of more Cardinals joining the Team USA ranks came out. Team USA announced their roster for the FIBA 3x3 U23 Nations League yesterday, and two of the four team members currently reside in Louisville. Hailey Van Lith and Emily Engstler will return to the 3x3 court to help Team USA to another championship. 

Van Lith and Engstler are both 3x3 veterans, though neither were on Louisville's 3x3 team in last month's event. The pair both played in the 2018 3x3 U18 National Championship with Van Lith's team defeating fellow teammate Kylee Watson (Oregon) in the championship game. Engstler also competed in the 2017 event. The final member of the four player roster is Madison Hayes of NC State. Hayes and Van Lith have played together before, winning gold for Team USA in the 2019 FIBA 3x3 U18 World Cup. HVL also has a 3x3 gold medal from the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.

The event will be held in France starting on August 2nd and continuing through August 4th. The team will convene camp on July 29th. 

Morningstar Awarded

Paige Morningstar added to her trophy case yesterday when she was announced as the 2020-21 Pennsylvania Volleyball Athlete of the Year by USA Today. This came one day after MaxPreps named Morningstar as the top girls high school athlete in the country. Morningstar was named first-team All-State for the third straight year as she led North Allegheny to an undefeated season and their fourth straight state championship. Tori Dilfer should still have the setter position locked up for this season as she has been fantastic for the Cards, but Coach Dani Busboom-Kelly must be wondering what kind of rotations and tactics she can deploy if Morningstar is ready for the college game on Day 1. 

Brief Olympic Update

The three sports we've been most interested in so far for the Olympics are softball, women's soccer, and field hockey. Basketball will get underway in a couple of days. Since Japan is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, writing in the morning is the perfect time to look at an update for the games

Team USA softball is having the most success so far, as they moved to 3-0 in the Round Robin portion of the tournament. As there are six softball teams, they've got two games remaining to try to make it to the gold medal game. USWNT is next on the docket. They just finished up their second game at time of writing. After a terrible opener against Sweden, Team USA was looking for a bounce back game to stay in contention for the knockout round. They should be able to advance out of group, as they knocked off New Zealand 6-1. 

Finally comes field hockey, where former Louisville star Ayeisha McFerran holds down the cage. At time of writing, Ireland is playing their first match of the tournament against South Africa. They just took a 2-0 lead right before the end of the third quarter. Look out for an update to the final score either on the podcast or in Jeff's article tomorrow. 

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

The show returns this week after a brief hiatus last week. We'll have four of the five regular hosts and should have plenty to talk about. There has been ample news throughout this week that will keep us busy. .

We've had some questions about how to listen to the show since it went off the airwaves so I'm going to run down the links below. If you want to listen live at 11AM, you can do that by going to Cardinal Couple's YouTube page and clicking on the live stream. Following the end of the show, that becomes a published video to the page you can watch back whenever. The other option is to wait for an hour or so after the show ends (a day or two if I'm not on that week's show) for the podcast to be uploaded. You can subscribe to the podcast in any of your favorite podcast platforms to have it sent straight to your device or listen to it right in your browser on the show's Anchor FM page. I also tweet (@bstcasescenario) the show link as soon as it's posted every week. Links to all of this are below.

Cardinal Couple YouTube: Link

Anchor (podcast host): Link

Apple Podcasts: Link

Breaker: Link

Google Podcasts: Link

Overcast (free account required): Link

Pocket Casts (free account and app required): Link

RadioPublic: Link

Spotify: Link

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-