Basketball Wraps Regular Season Play Today
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| ( we have a rich history of defeating the Irish...) |
With a trip to South Bend and a game against Notre Dame, the Cards put the final bow on the regular season today. That, of course, leads to the ACC tournament seeding permutations...but that's not quite easy to chart out. But let's give it a shot.
First off, Virginia Tech has a lock on the number one seed. At 14-3, no one can touch them.
Syracuse current sits in 2nd place alone at 13-5, but they have already completed all of their games, they don't play today.
There's a gaggle of teams at 12-5, all currently tied for third. NC State is one of them, and they play Wake Forest, so that's a likely win and would move them up into a tie for 2nd with Syracuse. The other two are...Louisville and Notre Dame. And since that's who we're playing today, the winner of the game will move up into a tie with Syracuse. The loser will drop to 12-6. At 11-6 lurk Florida State and Duke. FSU plays Clemson, a likely win for the Seminoles, and Duke could have a real battle on it's hands with North Carolina.
OK, so as long as Louisville wins today, and with the competition being Notre Dame that's certainly not a given, we'll move up into a tie for 2nd with Syracuse. Likely NC State will be there as well unless Wake pulls off the upset, and that will be your first four teams that get the double bye. I'm not going to dive into the tie-breaker to figure out specifically which seed we'd get because in three way (or more) ties, it gets quite complicated.
If we lose today, we drop into a likely tie with Florida State, and potentially Duke as well. If NC State wins, it's a tie for 5th, if the NC State loses, they drop into this tie gaggle as well and it becomes a tie for 4th, and then we definitely have to delve into the arcane tie-break rules to see who gets the double bye.
So that's the bst [sic] and worst case scenarios for the Cards. The good news is that a significant degree of our results are in our own hands. Beat Notre Dame and join that tie for 2nd and guarantee the double bye.
The permutations here are a complicated mess, as you can see. I've done my best to break it down, but it's certainly possible that I've got something wrong in all of this. Pardon my error if so, and please feel free to correct me in the comments. For maximum Internet Points, start your comment with, "Um, actually...".
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| (at least we don't have to deal with her whiny a$$ anymore) |
The opponent, as mentioned in Notre Dame. We probably don't need to do too much preview of this as we are pretty well familiar with them at this point in the season. Olivia Miles and freshman Hannah Hidalgo are the two that ESPN can't seem to stop talking about this year, and to be fair, they are both quite good players so some of it is justified.
The game is at 2pm, and it is on the flagship station ESPN. That means we get Pam Ward and Kelly Gramlich on the call, a fine pair to provide commentary, to be sure. And, as always, you have the option of listening in with Nick Curran and Cortnee Walton on 93.9FM. The bonus for the radio coverage is you get gems like the post-game discussion of cookies from Thursday. You can get a summary of that in the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast, details below.
Softball
Softball is finishing up their participation in the USF Tournament today, though the tournament overall goes through at least Monday. This weekend has been a bit less celebratory than others so far this season. UofL can't come out with a winning record for the weekend, but they can get it down to 2-3 with the game today against Central Michigan. All of UofL's games this weekend have been competitive, though today might end up being the exception.
Central Michigan is hopefully enjoying the weather in Tampa, because I don't think they've gotten too much enjoyment on the Bulls' field. They played competitively with Georgia Southern, losing 2-3, but just got pummeled by Villanova, losing 10-0 in five innings. Overall the Central Michigan Chippewas (they ask, out of respect for the Chippewa Indian people, that they be referred to with the complete "Central Michigan Chippewas" to distinguish them from the people) are sporting a 1-11 record.
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| ( a Daisy grows and blosoms in UofL's infield) |
Will Daisy Hess steal second? Will Ally Alexander make a spectacular play at second on defense? Will we see a smile out of Alyssa Zabala? Will we see a homerun from either Riley Frizell or Vanessa Miller? Yeah, all of these are good bets. The Cards could use a good win before they welcome in a quite good Arizona team to Ulmer on Tuesday.
No video at all listed for today's game, the best we can do is follow on sidearm stats.
In yesterday's action, Louisville started off with their only win of the weekend so far, taking eight innings to dispatch Georgia Southern, and that included a three run rally in the 8th to win it 7-6
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| ( the beautiful brooke, we need to get jared to get a few pictures of her) |
In the later game, the Cards got on the board first with a run in the first, but USF would answer in the bottom of the frame with four crossing the plate, with Brooke Gray entering the circle to stop the bleeding. She would go the rest of the distance with no runs scored on her, but the damage was done. The Cards got a run again in each of the 2nd and 3rd innings, but nothing after, losing in the final tally 4-3.
Lacrosse
The Lacrosse squad traveled to the land of three rivers and no straight roads to take on Pitt yesterday.
The good bets here are getting scores from Nicole Perroni and at least one of the Nakazawa sisters. And those paid off, in a big way. Both sisters hit career high scoring totals with older sis Kokoro leading the way with five, and little sis just behind with four. Perroni continued her consecutive game scoring streak with four, which I believe has reached 43 games at this point? Kylea Dobson also scored four, and a pair were contributed by Allegra Catalano and Rian Adkins each, with Tiffany Natoli scoring a single.
The final tally here was 19-11. Sara Adeche claimed six saves, her usual stalwart presence in the net.
The Cards will notionally stop off on the way home for the next game, against the Bearcats in Cincinnati. I say notionally as the game isn't until Tuesday, so of course the team will have returned home and will likely only bus up to Cincinnati Tuesday morning, or perhaps the day before due to an fairly early start, at noon.
Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast
It was a full house for the CCRHP yesterday. The whole crew showed up to play, with Paulie leading the way for Case, Daryl, Jared, and myself. Of course we had fun discussions of basketball, softball, and lacrosse. And, of course, I sneak in a volleyball tidbit in the Final Thoughts section (welcome to Sofia Maldonado Diaz who will be joining the Volleyball squad for her Covid year after playing four years at Arizona).
Check it out!
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JMcA
Sigh...one STUPID call...
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