Gamedays Galore - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Multiple Gamedays and Recaps

Lots of UofL Sports activity to recap from yesterday, and preview for today, so let's dive in.

Swim & Dive

Despite the "let's dive in", Swim & Dive is not in action today, though they did wrap up the ACC Championship meet yesterday, the fifth day of the event.

The most notable result of the day was the 400 Freestyle Relay, with Gabi Albiero,  Christiana Regenauer, Julia Dennis, and Ella Welch, setting a school record, but still only managing to come in a reasonably close second to UVA's quartet.

The team finished 3rd in the overall standings behind nationally top ranked Virginia and 4th ranked NC State.

Softball

UofL Softball is in the midst of their traditional season opening swing through the south in search of warmer weather with another two weeks before the home opener at Ulmer.

This weekend is the ACC/Big 10 Challenge with Georgia Tech hosting, but alas not streaming to ACC Network Extra.  The Cards and the Yellowjackets are playing against Wisconsin and Illinois.

A double-header for UofL yesterday to play against both foes.  The day started early with the first pitch at 10am against Wisconsin.  The game started with a defensive clinic, playing through six inning scoreless before UofL was able to put a pair on the scoreboard in the top of the 7th.

Transfer extraordinaire, Daisy Hess singled, moved to 2nd on a sacrifice by Sarah Gordon and scored on a Vanessa Miller double.  Miller subsequently scampered home on an Easton Lotus infield hit.

Taylor Roby played the complete game in the circle.

Next up was Illinois who put six across for the 6-1 win over UofL on Friday, but yesterday's contest would prove to be more competitive.

Illinois scored first, in the 2nd inning, with UofL not getting an answer on the board until the 5th.  Maddi Grant, with two outs already recorded, doubled into the right center gap.  Madison "Pickle" Winkler came in to pinch run and scored on a pinch hit single to left field by Makayla Hurst.

The Cards would threaten another run in the 7th after Korbe Otis ripped a triple out to left field, but the Illinois pitching was able to sit the next two batters down to freeze Otis at third.

Illinois would score the game winner in the bottom of the 8th.  Gabby Holloway started the game, was relieved by Sam Booe in the fifth.  Taylor Roby pitched the only out of the 8th.

Today's game will be the second one with Wisconsin and will get underway at 10am with no viewing options that we've been able to find.

Lacrosse

Lacrosse hosts Lindenwood for today's game at the Louisville Lacrosse Stadium.  Only in their first season in Division 1, in the Ohio Valley Conference, Lindenwood is 1-1 on the season so far, with a 17-9 loss to Cal, and a 17-15 win over Central Michigan.

This will be the first meeting between the teams.  It will be a 1pm start and can be seen on ACC Network Extra.

Basketball

The Walz squad is in Chestnut Hill in the Boston area to take on Boston College.

As we've talked about here in the pages of CC, and in audio on the CCRHP, Boston College is a much improved team over what they have traditionally fielded, and needs to be treated with respect.  Now, to be fair, they are still hanging around the bottom of the standings, but in this topsy turvy ACC, they're only a game or two behind the mid-pack teams, and a subjective view of their on-court play shows the improvements, even if the standings don't, yet.

Five players for BC average double-digit scoring, with a sixth falling just barely short.  Dontavia Waggoner leads with 13.1, followed up by Taina Mair, Maria Gakdeng, Jojo Lacey, T'Yana Todd, and Andrea Daley.

The Cards did win the first meeting this season, 73-65, where they went off for 22 points in the 2nd quarter to close the lead down to just one point at halftime.  They also only lost the 3rd quarter by a single point, underscoring the need to take this team seriously as they're not the doormat of the conference that they used to be.

Hailey Van Lith had 24 in the earlier natch between these two and Chrislyn Carr finished with 18

The game gets the full ACC Network linear treatment today, with the tip at noon.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

The full CCRHP crew connected yesterday for a fun show.  We covered Softball, Lacrosse, and Basketball both looking back and forward, as we are in this winter/spring overlap.

If you didn't catch it live on the YouTube stream, you can find it at anchor.fm or just about any podcast directory.  You can listen to it directly at:

https://anchor.fm/cardinal-couple/episodes/Up-and-Down-Week-for-UofL-e1v5qj0

-- JMcA