FRIDAYS WITH DARYL
GoOoOOoD Friday morning readers!
Let's get right into it, shall we?
FIELD HOCKEY
The Match
The Cardinals and the Cavaliers will face off Friday afternoon at 1pm to advance to the championship match. The Cards are tied 8-8 all time against UVA, evening the series on Sept. 17 when the Cavs visited Trager Stadium when the Cards were ranked #5 and the Cavs were #11 in the polls.
Regular Season Matchup - UofL vs UVA
Mattie Tabor scored the lone goal early in the second quarter for the Cards and freshman Mila de Kuijer posted five saves en route her fourth shutout of the season. It wasn't an easy victory for the Cards with Coach Sowry giving some candid post-game thoughts on how it played out. Louisville was able to break through in the sixth minute of the second quarter when junior defender Julie Kouijzer sent a pass to sophomore Charlie van Oirschot who maneuvered her way into the circle and fired a shot toward left post where Tabor deflected the ball past Virginia goalkeeper Tyler Kennedy. UofL only had 4 shots in the match, 2 of them on goal.
Coach Sowry's thoughts following the match --
"There's definitely a lot to take away from this game. Often when you get a win you might not look at the video, but we absolutely need to look at the video and see what went wrong. I think that there were way too many turnovers that were uncharacteristic. That opened a lot of seams for Virginia to attack. I'm disappointed in the way that we played because we are so much better than that. Was that us, or was it their pressure? Probably a combination of both. But as usual, it was a gritty win, and we finished the game strong."
How Virginia got here
The 5-seeded Virginia upset the 4-seeded Boston College in their first match of the quarterfinals in the ACC tourney in Syracuse NY.
The Cavaliers got the win in the first 12 minutes of play after a random storm (is it really random though? considering it is Syracuse New York in November? i digress) showed itself at the original game time. So after a short delay, the Cavs and the Eagles squared off to advance to the next round to face our #1 seeded Cardinals.
Sophomore Laura Janssen was wide open in front of the net when she received a pass from junior Danielle Husar. Janssen took on the goalie one-on-one, knocking her shot past the keeper and into the corner of the net for the game's first goal. It was her fifth goal of the season.
Grad student Rachel Robinson netted the match's only other goal with 7:11 remaining in the first half. Senior Amber Ezechiels took a hard shot from the top of the circle on a penalty corner, but her attempt was saved. Robinson picked up the ball off the rebound and worked to get it past the outstretched goalie for her second goal of the season to push the score 2-0 Cavs before the half. Virginia's freshman goalie Tyler Kennedy saved BC's best chance of scoring just a couple minutes later when Sky Caron attempted the penalty stroke. Tyler Kennedy had seven saves, picking up her second shutout of the season. Both squads had 8 shots on the day, UVA with the 7-3 advantage of shots on goal.
WOMENS BASKETBALL
I'm so glad to be able to post a WBB category on here again! Pre-season hype is fun and all but stats are better!!
The Cards faced the Union Bulldogs Thursday evening in front of a crowd of about 6,000+ (according to the post game press conference with Coach Walz). Walz mentioned the excitement the team felt as people were allowed back into the stands and the band was able to perform 'All Hail UofL' again for the home squad.
Overall, we saw a pretty balanced distribution of minutes for the squad. Senior guard, Ahlana Smith saw the most minutes on the floor with 20. It was an exhibition game for the Cards to get their feet wet heading into the 2021-22 season. The final score ended up being a clobbering 106-32 victory for the Cardinals. The starters for the game were Mykasa Robinson, Hailey Van Lith, Kianna Smith, Chelsie Hall and Olivia Cochran.
UofL shot 60% (42-70) from the field and 44% (8-18) from downtown for the evening. The Cards bench produced 60 of the team's total points with Liz Dixon leading all scorers with 15 points, 6 rebounds and 1 assist. The Bulldogs turned the ball over 31 times, 18 of them were steals which lead to 49 points off turnovers for UofL. The Cards forced Union's starting guard Shanique Lucas to turn the ball over 11 times in the game.
The Cards made only 56% of their free throws going 14-25 at the line. Coach Walz' area of improvement for the team was allowing the backdoor cuts as many times as they did.
New grad transfers Chelsie Hall (Vanderbilt) and Emily Engstler (Syracuse) got acquainted with the Yum Center environment pretty nicely. Hall finished 5-5 with 2 three's for 12 points on the night and Engstler finished 3-5 for 8 points, 6 rebounds and 1 assist.
The squad will face Arizona in a huge season opener with the national runner-up next Friday afternoon.
VOLLEYBALL
The Cards head back to the state of North Carolina to face off with NC State and UNC Friday evening and Sunday afternoon respectively.
UofL has only faced NC State 8 times in program history with the Cards leading the series 7-1 winning the last 4 matches. NC State is 13-10 overall and 7-5 in the ACC. The Wolfpack is coming off of a 3-1 loss to #14 Georgia Tech this past Sunday while the Cards are coming off a 3-1 win over the Dukies on the same day. NC State currently sits in the top five in the ACC in assists, kills and digs per set. The Wolfpack averages 12.91 assists and 13.91 kills per set, which is third-best in the ACC. The Wolfpack tallies 14.49 digs per set, which is good enough for the fifth-highest in ACC.
This one can be viewed on the ACC Network Extra with first serve coming at 7:00PM.
The gang will have your regularly scheduled joy and excitement of UofL women's sports on the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Saturday morning. I will be out for radio again this week as I am spending some quality time with my sister and nephew these past few weeks.
Have a great weekend readers and don't forget to change your clocks back this weekend!! (fun fact: I learned recently that Ben Franklin jokingly started Daylight savings time in order to save on the expense for candles!! so chew on that fact for a couple minutes and thank dear old Benjamin for the nonsense that is daylight savings time in the 21st century!)
As Always, Go Cards !
~Daryl
Good Afternoon Cards Nation, Cards just getting turned up, 106 wow,and only allowed 38.Go Cards!
ReplyDeletePs I wish I could get the stat sheet.Merv