Cardinals On the Road - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Field Hockey Visits Bahston

Field Hockey is in Boston, MA this weekend.  After their thrilling golden goal overtime win against Boston College Friday, the team took advantage of the whopping five miles of travel to their next opponent in Northeastern, and spent the day in Boston.  They got to visit some of the historic city after a morning practice.  Sites included a visit to the campus of Harvard, though technically speaking Harvard is in Cambridge, MA, and not Boston proper, it is all one big metro area.

As mentioned, the squad will be playing Northeastern today, just a quick ride up the Green line on the T past Fenway Park and a short walk, from Boston College.  Northeastern plays in the Colonial Athletic Association and currently sports a 4-9 record, 1-3 in conference.  They have wins over Drexel in conference, along with Dartmouth and Holy Cross.  They split with the Charles River contingent, beating Boston University, but losing to Harvard.  Their last game, a conference matchup against 21st ranked Delaware, was a week ago and was a close game, with the Blue Hens coming away with the 3-2 win.

The Huskies are led by Lauren Rowe, their most prolific shot taker.  She has six goals on the season, tied with Mak Graves.  Goalkeeping duties seem to be split between Julie Gluyas, and Erin Savage.  They've both played in at least 10 of their 13 games and the game starts are split eight to five.

The Cards will be looking for a fairly easy win in this won.  After a conference battle on Friday, I'm sure the team would welcome a relatively easy win.  Northeastern did show that they are capable of playing competitively with quality opponents last week, however, so this is another case of needing to not overlook an opponent that, on paper, shouldn't be much of a challenge.

A slightly earlier start for the game today at noon.  Streaming is only on Flo Sports, so that will make it a bit of an extra challenge to watch. They do offer a 7 day free trial...or you can shell out the $29.99 a month. If you'veused your one free trial...they won't allow another. 

You can follow the stats (from Statbroadcast) here:  https://stats.statbroadcast.com/statmonitr/?id=363640

Volleyball Visits Wake Forest

Volleyball is also on the road this weekend.  After a tougher than expected win over Virginia Tech, the wide net Cards headed south to the western end of Tobacco Road and Winston Salem to take on The Demon Deacons of Wake Forest.

The Deacs are 2-5 in conference play, 11-7 overall.  Their only real notable wins on their schedule are the in-conference ones in a five set epic battle with Boston College (25-23, 25-21, 22-25, 25-27, 15-13), and a sweep against Notre Dame Friday (25-22, 25-23, 25-21).  As you can see, all of these have been close sets.  A five set loss to Kansas is somewhat interesting and they did take Georgia Tech to 28-26 in the third set before losing the match.  Their only other match against a top 25 team so far was a sweep by Western Kentucky (25-20, 25-21, 25-13), and the other local interest game was a Wake sweep of Bellarmine (25-22, 25-19, 25-18).

UofL will need to be on the lookout for the middles for Wake, 6'4" Olivia Franke, and Delaney McSweeney standing a whopping 6'7".  Both are hitting .310 on the year so far, which is not spectacular for middle hitters.  The real threat comes from the outsides Kamryn Malloy (6'0") and Ashley Slater (6'2"), hitting at .276, and .192 clips respectively.  Again, those percentages aren't spectacular and reflect the challenges this Wake Forest squad has faced all year.

5'10" Andrea Fuentes will be your setter, and Kalani Whiplock I believe will be in the libero jersey.

Louisville should have a relatively easy cruise through this match, as well as this coming Friday's matchup with Virginia, but that's also what was expected of the match two days ago against Virginia Tech and that got a bit more interesting than expected.  Take that as an object lesson not to overlook teams and be fully engaged and ready to go every time you hit the floor, or risk an embarrassing loss.

Next Sunday's match against Pitt looms large on the horizon, and it's important not to be looking too far ahead to it, and stay in "the now" and be sure to take care of business against this Wake Forest team first.

TV coverage on this one is on RSN, which I believe is typically available on channel 70 on Spectrum here in Louisville.  For the rest of us, may the odds be ever in your favor in finding a place to watch this one. They go by the tag "Bally Sports" now. A shame this one isn't on ACCN or ACCNX...  If you can find it online or on TV, it is a noon start.

A Soccer Tangent

As a bit of an aside, I joined my family (mother, brother, sister-in-law, niece, nephew) for an outing to Racing Louisville FC.  The first real fall evening, it was a crisp night out, but the Racing Louisville FC  club did get the upset 3-1 win over the Orlando Pride.

Orlando has a lot of power on the squad with National Team members representing at least two different countries in Alex Morgan, Sydney Leroux, Alli Krieger for the US, and Marta for Brazil.

While this is a bit outside of our mission of sharing the joy and excitement of specifically UofL women's sports, on an off evening for UofL sports, with teams either on the road, or in a bye week, it was a fun outing, to support a club that is rapidly building a lot of pride and support from the city, and with good reason.  They have a good product, by good people, and the set up a great atmosphere to enjoy it all in. And, former Cardinals great Emina Ekic is on the Racing roster and did see the pitch last night in late minutes.  As a UofL fan, it was a joy to look out onto the pitch and see Ekic matching up, at least briefly, with Alex Morgan.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

A technical problem prevented the live streaming of the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast yesterday, though we, Case really, were able to record it and it is available in its more pure podcast form.

Field Hockey, Soccer, Volleyball, and a bit of Basketball was on the menu with Case, Jared, Paulie, and myself all on the call.  Daryl had the chance to go meet her new nephew and take him a Utah onesie for some reason?

You can find it at it's podcast home on Anchor at https://anchor.fm/cardinal-couple or at any of your normal podcast directories.

Streaming for next week may not be available as well as I will be heading to Indianapolis to watch cars drive fast, and turn left, with no drivers in them in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (https://www.indyautonomouschallenge.com/).

JMcA