Cards Beat the Cats...Again
It hasn't been a total academic year sweep for the Cards over the Cats, Kentucky did get the wins in the two "biggest" sports, football and, unsurprisingly, Men's Basketball, but otherwise, the Cards are generally coming out on top of the Cats when they meet this year.
The two teams didn't compete in women's soccer this year, but the men did get the dub over the Cats. Volleyball is the other traditional fall meeting, where DBK's squad swept UK all the way back down I-64.
The latest edition of the Cards' overall dominance over the Cats came yesterday in the Ralph Wright Natatorium, where both the men and women earned solid wins over UK.
Both of the Cards teams won by substantial overall margins, 210-90 for the women, and 209.5-88.5 for the men.
Highlights include the 200 medley relay where the Cards entered two teams, and they came in first and second. The top finishing team included Karoline Bennett, Ella Welch, Christiana Regenauer, and Gabi Albiero and just barely missed making an A cut time. The 200 individual freestyle also had two Cards in the top two spots, as Summer Cardwell touched first, just edging out teammate Fernanda Celidonio.
Paige Hetrick topped the podium in the 100 backstroke with a B cut qualifying time. Teammate Ally Boynton took second. Ella Welch won the breaststroke, but UK managed to get the second spot in this one.
Stop me if you've heard this before with UofL Women's Swimming...the 200 Butterfly. Yes, following in the...footsteps? splashlanes?...of Kelsey Dahlia (nee Worrell), and Mallory Comerford, the latest UofL fly great, which to be fair we've talking about for a few years now already, is Gabi Albiero, beating the rest of the field yesterday by three seconds.
A full sweep for UofL in the 50 freestyle, and wow if you've never seen one of these events in person, it's crazy intense being just a single lap up and back in the pool. And since NCAA still works in yards for their events, it's even quicker than International 50's which are measured in meters, adding almost another 15 feet to the event. Christina Regenauer topped the podium, joined by Julia Dennis and Karoline Barrett.
Lindsay Gizzi, fresh off her spring sports media day appearance won the three meter springboard in diving, part of an ongoing surge in the Cards' diving prowess.
Back to the long pool, UofL dominated even more in the 100 freestyle, filling the podium for points, and just to add insult to injury took 4th with an exhibition swimmer. Christina Regenauer, Julia Dennis, and Lucy Mehreban scored points, with Ella Welch taking that 4th place spot as an exhibition swimmer.
Kim Herkle won the 200 breaststroke. Summer Cardwell took the 500 free by an easy four seconds over teammate Maddie Luther.
Another full podium of Cards for the 100 butterfly, yup, Gabi Albiero on top, joined by Christina Regenauer and Karoline Barrett. The swimmers in the 200 Individual Medley pulled a, "yeah, well how about this", filling the top four spots all with Cardinals. Fernanda Celidonio, Kim Herkle, and Tristan Ulett kept Maddie Hall off the official podium, but all were no doubt celebrating together.
And, to cap it all off, the 400 freestyle relay was also taken 1-2 by the Cards A and B teams. Gabi Albiero, Julia Dennis, Lucy Mehreban, and Ella Welch made up the winning A team, with Bianca Costea, Karoline Barrett, Fernanda Celidonio, Tristen Ulett comprising the 2nd place B team.
Really a great win for the Cards over the Cats to extend the UofL success in the rivalry for the year. Baseball and Softball will be final meetings between the two schools. Softball only plays the Cats once this year, here at Ulmer, but Baseball will play a home and home with one game each in Louisville and Lexington.
WBB Hosts Pitt
Pitt joins the Cardinals for a game at 2pm today at the KFC Yum! Center. They'll be looking to build on their success Thursday where they beat Virginia.
Pitt didn't exactly schedule a barn burner of a non-conference schedule, but even as such, they finished just barely sub-.500 before diving into the harder ACC schedule where they lost six before getting the four point win over UVA.
You can never take a day off in the ACC, but hopefully today will be a day for the Cards to concentrate on some of the uneven parts of their game and improve.
The Cards did, of course, win the first matchup of the year against Pitt, and you would be forgiven, if you just looked at the final score and thought it was an easy win for UofL. However most of the 30 point margin of victory came by outscoring Pitt 26-6 in the fourth quarter.
The main threat from the Panthers is Liatu King. She's not an outside shooting threat, not having taken a single three point shot all year, but she does hit over 55% of the shots she takes from elsewhere on the floor. She averages 19.5 points per game and maybe even more impressively, over 10 rebounds per game. If the Cards can block her out from the boards, and mostly keep Pitt to single-shot possessions, that will go a long way towards securing the victory.
It is a 2pm start, as mentioned above. If you can't make it to the KFC Yum! Center, coverage is on ACC Network Extra where you'll get Jeff Grier on play by play, and Jessica McDaniel (or as we mostly remember her, Jess Laemmle - Attack Yorkie). As always, you have the option of hearing Nick Curran verbally paint the picture of the game on 93.9FM, with the non Attack Yorkie but still great Cardinal Alumna Cortnee Walton on color.
Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast
We gave quite a bit of time to WBB, as is typical this time of year, but we did get a nice recap from Case of the Spring Sports Media Day.
I do have a correction from my "Final Thoughts". I claimed that no home team had won a match in the Pro Volleyball Federation league yet (there are only three matches in to the season, so it's not that crazy), but in fact the Thursday match between the Grand Rapid Rise, and the Columbus Fury was in Grand Rapid, rather than Columbus as I had thought. GR did get the win in a sweep powered largely by Claire Chaussee's whopping 21 kills. Were still looking for a four set win in the league, though, as we've had the above sweep, and a pair of five setters.
Check out the podcast at it's anchor.fm/spotify home at:
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JMcA
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