Fall Trio of Teams In Action - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Fall Trio of Teams All In Action

All three of the major women's team sports at UofL are in action today after at least a day of rest yesterday.

Field Hockey

The one with sticks get it started with an 11am pass back.  They're continuing the ACC vs Ivy League weekend hosted by North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  The opponent today is Princeton and it can be viewed on ACC Network Extra.

The Tigers are 13th in the Field Hockey preseason coaches poll (the week one poll will be released Tuesday), and they have only played one game thus far before today.  That one was a close loss, 4-3 against perennial powerhouse, and 2nd ranked, North Carolina on Friday.

It's hard to know too much of what to expect from a team this early in the season, in Friday's game against UNC, all of Princeton's three scores came on penalties, two were penalty corners, and one was a penalty stroke.  Given Louisville's challenges with converting on penalty corners in the past few years, this could be a game of contrasts, with Princeton playing for the fouls in the circle to get a set play, and Louisville wheeling and spinning trying to get scores in open play.

It is expected that this weekend will be the only time Louisville will play on this field this year as North Carolina will be coming to Trager for their conference matchup with the Cards.

After this fifth game of the season opening road trip, the Cards will be returning to get the home slate opened up with five games in the friendly confines of Trager Stadium, including the above UNC game.

Women's Soccer

Coach Karen Ferguson-Dayes has been hanging out with her squad in Harrisonburg, VA for the second half of the week.  After playing Memphis there Thursday, they play their hosts, James Madison University today, starting at 1pm.  You'll need an ESPN+ subscription to watch.

JMU is 3-1-1 on the young season.  They started of with the draw hosting VCU, then followed that up with their trio of wins.  The first was an easy cruise to victory, 4-0 against Morehead St. in Kentucky, then 1-0 over Charlotte in Charlotte, and 2-0 over La Salle in Philadelphia.  Continuing the road trip, 5th ranked Virginia handed them an 0-2 loss in Charlottesville.

The first Virginia score ended a nearly 430 minute stretch of scoreless playing time by JMU stretching back to last season, so we should expect a stout defensive set, although we can see from the scores above that they do know how to find the back of the net as well.

Amanda Attanasi is the leading goal scorer for JMU, with a trio so far this season, Sophia Verrechia is next with a pair.

Volleyball

Finally, today, at 2pm and on ACC Network, the volleysquad continue their high pressure non-conference schedule with Ohio State at LNFCU Arena on campus.

The Buckeyes are 8th ranked, a drop of one spot from pre-season after being bested by then number two Texas in the opening weekend.

OSU is in town for the Cardinal Classic which kicked off Friday with Louisville vs San Diego in an exciting match between top 15 teams.  The Toreros and Buckeys played yesterday in what seemed, from livestats, to be quite a lively match.  SDU swept OSU, but had to use some extra points to get it done in two of the sets, 25-22, 26-24, 28-26.

Emily Londot is the biggest offensive threat for OSU swinging on the right side.  Gabby Gonzales is the biggest left side hitter, with Rylee Rader being the offensive power in the middle.  Mac Podraza runs the show as the setter.

OSU should be hungry for this one, looking to avoid an 0-4 start to the season that would almost certainly drop them out of the top 10 in rankings, despite having a very high strength of schedule so far.  Louisville, of course, wants to continue their undefeated season, and having seen what its like when the wheels fall of in a disastrous second set on Friday, hopefully they've come through better for it.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

And finally, the CCRHP made another appearance yesterday.  A fast paced show, covering recaps and previews of all three of the above sports, the crew is back into the fall sports routine.  We also managed to get a discussion of the non-conference women's basketball schedule that was released this week in as well.

Plenty of excitement buoyed by wins across the board, Case, Jared, Paulie, and myself all had a good time and hopefully were able to get some good analysis and discussion in there.

Find it at anchor.fm, or pretty much any other podcast directory, the direct link to the anchor.fm page is at https://anchor.fm/cardinal-couple/episodes/Ranked-Wins-Galore-e1nbcku

JMcA

- JMcA