Round 2 Begins - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Cards vs Gonzaga

Round two of the NCAA tournament begins today.  The Cards are, of course, still playing at home in the KFC Yum! Center and have gotten the 7pm timeslot on ESPN, a rare evening Sunday game for women's basketball, and certainly a high profile game on the flagship of the ESPN fleet.  The late timeslot is no doubt helped by playing a west coast team.

Gonzaga is the nine seed in the region, winning in a very mild upset of Nebraska, 68-55 Friday, in the game before UofL played UAlbany.

27-6 on the season so far, Gonzaga does suffer some from what we see a lot on the west coast, where they just don't play all that competitive of a schedule overall.  The WCC does them no favors, either with the only notable conference opponent being BYU who beat the Zags in both regular season meetings, but lost to Gonzaga in the WCC Championship game.  The non-conference slate wasn't much to brag about for the Zags either, though it is notable for having a home and home matchup against Stanford.  The trees won in Spokane 66-62, but dispatched the Bulldogs a bit easier in Stanford, 66-50.

The Bulldogs have four players that average double digit scoring, Kayleigh Truong leads with 11.1, Melody Kempton at 11.0, Kaylynne Truong 10.5, and Yvonne Ejim just sneaking into double digit with 10.1.  To answer the likely next question, yes, Kayleigh and Kaylynne Truong are sisters, twins in fact, and their stat lines are remarkably similar across the board.  Kempton and Ejim are not three point threats, but the Truongs definitely have range with Kaylynne being having a slightly higher tendency for them.  The real outside threat from the Zags is Cierra Walker, shooting more of the treys than anyone on the UofL squad, even Kianna Smith, and hitting them at upwards of a 42% clip.  Gonzaga can challenge the passing lanes fairly well, stacking up quite competitively with the Cards in steals...other than Emily Engstler's mind boggling 77 on the season.

After the First Round -- Brackets

The womens' bracket is seeing more upsets that seems typical this year.  No region is fully chalk after the first round, though the Greensboro and Spokane regions each only saw a single upset in the round of 32.  10 seed Creighton advanced in the Greensboro region over Colorado, while 12 seed FGCU took down the ACC's Virginia Tech to advance in the Spokane region.

The Bridgeport region saw two upsets, though one is nine seed Kansas St over 8 seed Washington St, a very minor upset at most.  The other was 11 seed Princeton adding insult to injury in Lexington by eliminating 6 seed Kentucky.  Who knew that Tigers and Peacocks could be friends?

The real craziness happened in the Wichita region with all four sites seeing an upset, though no hosts got taken down.  Nine seed Gonzaga, as mentioned above, was a minor upset over Nebraska, 12 seed Belmont in what could almost have been called a home game for them compared to their opponent -  eliminated 5 seed Oregon in Knoxville, 11 seed Villanova took out BYU in Michigan, and 10 seed South Dakota beat Ole Miss in Waco on Baylor's floor.

Cardinal Couple NCAA WBB Pick "EM" Contest

So what does the Friday and Saturday contests mean for the Cardinal Couple Bracket Challenge?  Here's the update from Bracket Czar Jared:

27-5: Kenneth Stark Sr

25-7: Joe Hill, Bea, Perry Sosh, Case

24-8: Kenny S, Curtis Franklin, Nick O, Jared, Benny J, Katy Whitesell

23-9: Blue Lou, Arthur, Jason Wyrick, Jeff

22-10: Louavulfan35, Sonya Sykes, Doug Anderson

21-11: Paulie, Daryl, Vivian McAdams

20-12: David Watson

13-19: The CC Chimps

-- One bracket lost a finalist

-- Two brackets have lost a Final Four team

-- Eight brackets have lost at least one Elite Eight team

All but one bracket has lost at least one game for the Sunday-Monday games.

Thanks to Jared Anderson for doing this and to Paulie for catching Jared's mistakes...

If you have a question about your entry, leave a comment in the comments section. Chances are, I won't reply (I rarely read our comments section) but another of our industrious chimps probably will.  

Softball Gets Rained On

Literally and figuratively, Softball got rained on yesterday in their series against Georgia Tech.  After a big come from behind win on Friday, the Cards were unable to repeat the feat yesterday.  Georgia Tech won 17-5.

Much of the game was a real pitcher's duel, going scoreless through four innings, but the Yellowjackets did get their bats going against Taylor Roby in the 5th, scoring three before Holly Aprile moved Chardonnay Harris into the circle and Roby over to designated player.

The Cards got a couple back in the bottom of the inning.  Korbe Otis reached in a fielder's choice, took second on a passed ball, and then first base got backfilled by Kendall Smith drawing a walk.  Ally Alexander also drew a walk filling the bases.  At that point, Sydney Bickel (the All-Syd team continues!) came in to pinch run for Smith, and finally Vanessa Miller's single scored Otis and Bickel.

Glovey McGloveface at second. (Dylann
Cravens)

The wheels were falling off for the Louisville defense, however, and GT sebt five around the circuit in the 6th.  Again, though, the Louisville offense would reclaim some of those.

Leading off, Jenna Servi reset the UofL order with a single, and promptly finished the circuit on Carmyn Greenwood's triple.  A couple of batters later, Taylor Roby would ensure that the Cards would continue their homerun streak, going to the right field berm, and scoring Greenwood in the process.

Unfortunately, the defense didn't recover in the 7th, and GT spotted another eight on the scoreboard.  This time, UofL had no answer and went scoreless in their last chance inning.

The Techsters and the Cards will finish their series today with a game at noon.  ACC Network Extra is your source for video on this one, but the forecast looks absolutely wonderful for a relaxing afternoon at Ulmer.

Say "Hey" to our columnist and photographer if you see him out at Ulmer today -- but be prepare to end up in a photo, as he experiments around with some new lenses. 

Just stay clear if he's taking a "selfie".  

TODAY'S SOFTBALL PHOTOS BY JARED ANDERSON.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

Lots of basketball talk for the CCRHP yesterday, but we did get some discussion of Softball in there as well.  Good fun and discussion as always, even if we did miss Daryl on the call.

Check it out at your favorite podcast directory, including it's anchor.fm home, at:

https://anchor.fm/cardinal-couple/episodes/WBB-Advances-to-Second-Round-e1fusvb

JMcA