Survive and Advance - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Elite Eight Achieved

The Louisville women's basketball team advanced to the Elite Eight with a 76-64 win over Tennessee in Wichita.

The Lady Vols got on the board first at the beginning of the game, and would trade buckets with the Cards a few times.  UofL would take their first lead of the game three and a half minutes in on a Kianna Smith three pointer, and would never relinquish the lead in the game again.  Tennessee would get within two at the beginning of the fourth quarter after spending all of the 3rd quarter chipping away at the lead.

Louisville led by as much as 15 points midway through the second quarter, and while it never felt like UofL was about to let it slip away, no lead ever felt truly safe.

Emily Engstler and Hailey Van Lith both had 20+ point games, 23 for Van Lith and 20 for Engstler.  Engstler would pair that with a 10 rebound effort for a double double.  Van Lith was the most giving on the team with six assists, and Chelsie Hall handed out four assists while just missing double-digit scoring with nine.  Kianna Smith had 12 points and four steals.  A great effort by the freshman Payton Verhulst as well.  Verhulst dropped seven points and snagged a rebound in front of what was reported to be a massive group of family and friends with Wichita being only about two and a half hours driving time away from her home in De Soto, Kansas.

Perhaps the most under-stat-captured efforts of the game were Olivia Cochran and Liz Dixon.  Three points, three rebounds, and an assist show up on the stat sheet for Cochram, and more alarming if all you look at is the stat sheet was only 16 minutes and five personal fouls.  Dixon had a similar sort of stat line, two points, three blocks, and four rebounds, but what doesn't get shown is how they battled in the paint against 6'6" Tamari Key and was part of largely shutting down the Tennessee big game, holding Key to only three points as well.

The Cards advance to the Elite Eight and will be facing Michigan tomorrow night with a 9pm EDT start time.  Michigan...it can only be described as survived...against 10 seed South Dakota, winning 52-49 over the Coyotes.  The other 10 seed still in the tournament, Creighton, did advance to the Elite Eight but will have a tall task ahead of them tonight against South Carolina.  Also in action yesterday, again "survive" is the only verb for NC State's win over Notre Dame, 66-63, and UConn handled business against Indiana, 75-58.

The FRED Report

"Yabba, Dabba, Doo ! It's the Elite Eight for you, LOU !!"

FREE THROWS -- The best quarter for free throw shooting for the Cards was the 2nd quarter, with the squad hitting 4-6 for 66.67%.  And if that's the best it got, well, obviously there's not going to be a letter here.  At just a touch shy of 62% for the game, no "f" can be awarded.  -

REBOUNDS -- 36 rebounds for the Cards, not a terrible total, but this is always compared to the opponents total as well, and in this defensive battle with lots of forced shots on both ends of the court, there were lots of rebounds to be gotten.  Tennessee claimed 52 of them, putting Louisville on the losing end of this stat.  Against, no letter can be awarded here.  -

For EFFORT/EXECUTION, there's a lot of "eye test" here, though assists come in to play.  15 assists on 28 made field goals is a nice total, and compares favorably to Tennessee's nine assists on 24 field goals.  Under 42% field goal shooting is ok, but not spectacular.  I'll award an upper case "E" here.  I think there could be an argument that it's a bit generous, but I credit a lot to the team not giving up as the lead narrowed at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and digging deep to finish the game off well.  Capital "E"

DEFENSE -- For the "D" letter grade, I tend to look to the right side of the stat sheet a lot, in addition to feel from watching the game.  11 steals, eight blocks, and only seven turnovers (compared to UT's 18), combined with keeping the effort level high, I'll give the capital "D".  

FINAL FRED TALLY: 

- - E D

Cardinal Couple Bracket Report

Bracket updates from Bracket Czar Jared, with double-check by Paulie, as is our typical practice:

42 wins: Bea, Perry Sosh

41 wins: Kenny Schneider, Nick O, Kenneth Stark Sr, Jared, Jeff (wait, really?  My dumpster fire of a bracket has 41 wins?!)

40 wins: Benny J, Joe Hill

39 wins: Doug Anderson, Jason Wyrick, Katy Whitesell, Blue Lou

38 wins: Case

37 wins: David Watson

36 wins: Arthur, Louavulfan35, Daryl, Vivian, Curtis

34 wins: Paulie

32 wins: Sonya

19 wins: CC Chimps

Brackets with all of their Final Four picks still remaining: Kenny Schneider, Blue Lou, Nick O, Kenneth Stark Sr, Bea, Vivian, Doug Anderson, Jason Wyrick, Jared, Katy, Jeff, Daryl

Lacrosse

Scott Teeter and his Lacrosse squad tangled with UVA yesterday at the Louisville Lacrosse Stadium in what Winnie the Pooh would certainly have called a blustery day.  The Cavaliers would get the win in a close matchup, 12-11.

Hannah Morris likely scoring one of her pair

Our Jared was there and brought us these pictures, but alas, I couldn't take this one in as I was driving to Cincinnati and back dealing with car problems.  Many thanks to my mother for the rescue and impromptu trip there so I could pick up a loaner vehicle.

UVA did get out to a quick start in the first quarter, getting three on the scoreboard before Louisville could get the offense in gear.  The Cards would get two back, thanks to Nicole Perroni and Paige Richbourg.  The Cavs would get another before the end of the quarter, however.

It was all Cards in the 2nd quarter, though.  A pair by Allegra Catalano, and one by Hannah Morris put the Cards on top 5-4 at halftime.

Catalano would complete the hat trick to open the 3rd quarter scoring, but also set off a blizzard of offense on both ends of the field.  UVA would find the back of the net five times in the quarter and UofL got four.  Catalano claimed three of those with Hannah Morris chipping in her 2nd of the game.

Kokoro Nakazawa tallied a couple of assists

With the score tied 9-9 after three quarters, it was a sprint to the finish.  UVA would score a pair before Nicole Perroni would claw one back with just over five minutes left in the game.  Another UVA score and Paige Richbourg would get another to bring the UVA lead back to just one. 

At the end of the game, Louisville would have one last chance, without about 10 seconds left on the clock, to run the length of the field a fire a shot home, but the long shot was saved by the UVA goalkeeper to preserve the 12-11 lead for the Cavs as time ran out.

UofL Lacrosse alumnae (left to right: Jen Schaaf,
Alex McNicholas, and Ally Hall

Another great effort by the Louisville Lacrosse squad as they continue to chip away at fearsome ACC opponents.

UofL will stay at home for another couple of games, but step out of conference a bit.  Ohio State (no, I'm not putting a "The" in front of it), will come to play Thursday evening at 7pm.  Vanderbilt will be next up at the LLS on Tuesday April 5th with a noon start.

Softball

Softball will be wrapping up their series with Clemson today after falling to the Tigers again yesterday.  Louisville would like to get a win against the solidly Top 20 Clemson team, but so far the Tigers have come out on top

.

Yesterday's bout was a five inning run-rule win for Clemson.  The Tigers put up a trio of runs in both the 2nd and 3rd innings and were threatening for that many or more in the 5th, but the run-rule put a stop to it after the 2nd run of the inning got the score to 8-0.

Chardonnay Harris takes the loss on this one as both the starting pitcher and spending the most time in the circle with 2.1 innings pitched.  Sam Booe made an appearance for 1.2 innings, and Payton Hudson finished out the final two outs of the fifth.

The game today will start at noon in Clemson and is on the ACC Network via your tuner, or as always you can catch it via streaming on the ACC Network Extra.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

(Not a pic of yesterday's podcast lineup...
but we do have CCR as our show's first three initials.)

Case, Daryl, Jared, and Paulie all convened to record the CCRHP yesterday.  Alas, with my emergency trip to Cincinnati and back, the live streaming component via Youtube was not able to happen.

I did listen to most of it myself on the way back down I-71, and it was a great discussion and a lot of fun to just get to listen to.  Basketball dominated the discussion as you might expect as they covered the tournament journey to that point, and previewed the game against Tennessee.

Good fun, and easy to check out at any of your favorite podcast directories and at it's anchor.fm home at:

https://anchor.fm/cardinal-couple/episodes/Cards-in-the-Sweet-Sixteen-e1g9mmd

JMcA