The Overlap Begins
The overlap period, when both fall and winter sports, begins in earnest today. UofL women's sports has Volleyball and Field Hockey both in action from the fall contingent, and the home opener for Basketball representing the winter sports..
Let's get to it.
Field Hockey
While not the first to get started today, it is the biggest competition of the day, as Field Hockey continues their NCAA tournament run. The Cards match up, again, with Northwestern, the number two seed in the tournament. The Cards and Wildcats tangled early in the season, on August 27th with Louisville coming away the victor 1-0.
Northwestern brings a 19-1 record into the game with that earlier Louisville game being their only blemish, so you know they'll be looking to avenge that loss. They did not shy away from big games with good teams, of course, as a member of the Big 10 conference they couldn't avoid some of them, but even beyond conference play, you see wins over opponents such as UMass, Duke, and Boston College. None of those teams to taken for granted.
This is the quarterfinal round of the tournament, so the teams are playing to advance next weekend to North Carolina to the Field Hockey Final Four.
The video coverage is on Big10+ streaming, as the Wildcats are the hosting team. I heard reports that the previous game was available without a Big10+ account, so hopefully this one will be as well.
The first pass will be at 2pm.
Volleyball - Senior Day
It's Volleyball's Senior Day Celebration, and the Cards will be honoring four players, Aiko Jones, Ceci Rush, Ayden Bartlett, and Briggita Petrenko.
Petrenko has been with us the shortest period of time, just this season, as a graduate transfer from Coastal Carolina. Ceci Rush and Ayden Bartlett are finishing up their four years of eligibility and choosing not to use their Covid year. Both have played supporting roles as DSes and particularly as serving specialists. Aiko Jones is finishing up her sixth year at Louisville. After red-shirting her first year, she has played all four of her regular eligibility years and her Covid year here at Louisville.
The opponent today is UNC. The previous matchup between the two was October 6th, and Louisville won it 3-1 (19-25, 25-23, 25-20, 25-19).
Very unusually, your scribe for the day won't be able to be at the match, due to work obligations (traveling for a conference that starts tomorrow morning), but you can be sure that I will be following as best I can from Denver.
First serve is at 1pm and, as typical, streaming is available on ACC Network Extra.
Basketball - Home Opener
It's your first chance to see your Louisville Women's Basketball squad live this season...well, unless you drove up to Cincinnati earlier in the week or went to Canada this summer. . The opponent is DePaul, lead by head coach Doug Bruno, all around good guy, with a very cool collection of Jerry Garcia ties.
DePaul is officially 2-0, having beaten Western Michigan solidly (77-53), and Stonehill in quite a romp (99-52). They do have two exhibition games listed where they solidly beat Lewis (68-45), but also got solidly handled by what looks to be a very good, again, Iowa squad (72-94).
The Cards, of course, are coming off of a win at Cincinnati, but one where the Cards lost both the 1st and 3rd quarters and most of the margin of victory came from the 22-7 second quarter. There's still plenty of questions for fans with this Cardinals team, mostly still of the form of, "Who is that?" with all of the new faces, but as the team, and the fans, get to know each other better, let's look for more of those second quarters than the first and third.
The 4pm start should give you time to get from LNFCU arena and the volleyball match, down to the KFC Yum! Center for basketball before tip, but don't dawdle if you want to put off the double-header. Hopefully the Fighting DBKs will get the deed done in three, or at worst four, sets to help the transition.
The 4pm start is partly informed by the TV coverage being on the linear ACC Network.
Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast
We had a whirlwind tour through sports yesterday, covering Field Hockey, Volleyball, and Basketball, as well as take a few minutes to share some stories from various veteran family members in honor of Veterans Day yesterday.
The recording is available on its Spotified Anchor.fm home at:
or at least it appears to be, as I can't quite confirm it on the Airport Wifi of Dubious Quality.
--
JMcA
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