Soccer Kicks Off Fall Season -- THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Cards Face Auburn Tonight

At long last, the University of Louisville fall sports will begin regular season action tonight. We'll have to wait a week for the home opener, but Louisville women's soccer will get the season underway tonight in Auburn, Alabama as they take on the Tigers from the SEC. Tonight's matchup will be the second meeting all-time between Louisville and Auburn in women's soccer with the Tigers taking the first match 1-0 on March 20, 2021. Yes, that was a regular season match, despite the date, as the Fall 2020 season was postponed to Spring 2021 due to the covid pandemic. 

Mackenzie Geigle

Auburn finished last season at 27 in the RPI after a second round exit in the NCAA tournament. The Tigers reached a highest ranking of 6th in the Coaches Poll and spent three weeks in the top ten before a bad road loss (4-1 to unranked Texas A&M) knocked them down to 16th. Auburn entered the NCAA tournament on a bit of a skid, going 1-1-3 in their final five conference games to finish 5th in the SEC at 4-2-4 in league play. They responded to that skid by losing in the first round of the SEC tournament to 11-seed LSU 2-1. The Tigers of Auburn had thumped the Tigers of LSU 4-0 just one month prior.

Auburn clunked into the NCAA tournament on a four-match winless streak, where they took on FIU in a first round match at home. The Tigers beat the Panthers 4-1, but their late slide put them in a disadvantageous seeding position. Auburn took on Ohio State in the second round in Winston-Salem and ended their season with a 2-1 loss. 

Auburn faced a rash of departures, mostly due to graduation, and they return just 11 players from last year's team. As a result, the coaches are much less bullish on the squad this season, as they enter the year receiving just nine points worth of votes in the preseason top-25 poll. While it's "just nine points," that is nine points more than Louisville received, so glass houses and all that. Also, of the 11 returners, three of those were in the top five in points scorers for the 2024 team, including Olivia Woodson, who led the team in points (25) and goals (11). Dylan Driver and Shelby Sallee each had 14 points, with Driver second on the team in assists (8) and Sallee tied for second with five goals. 

Erynn Floyd

Auburn did lose all of their goalkeeper minutes from last season and two of the top three minutes earners among field players were graduating defenders. Unfortunately for the Cards, the other two minutes earners in the top four were also defenders who are now seniors. While it will hurt Auburn to have broken up a very seasoned back-five, keeping two senior defenders will give Louisville's new look offense plenty of headaches. The Tigers appear to have an open competition in goal, as they return a redshirt sophomore and a redshirt freshman while also bringing in a transfer redshirt junior and a true freshman. We'll see who gets the nod against the Cards tonight. 

Louisville, to their credit, will have plenty of consistency from their defensive unit as well. The Cards will likely start a defensive unit that returns 5/5 players. Erynn Floyd returns in goal while Karsyn Cherry, Hadley Snyder, Lizzie Sexton, and Brooklyn Lee shore up the defense. Let's not think about next season just yet, as four of those five are seniors. The defensive consistency continues even more if you extend it to the defensive midfielders and Karen Ferguson-Dayes keeps the same philosophy as last year. In that case, Louisville's back seven will remain the same, with Betsy Huckaby and AG Gibson taking the lion's share of the minutes as the back two midfielders in a 4-5-1 formation last season. 

Cherry celebrates with Emma Kate (EK) Schroll

Karsyn Cherry, by the way, received a late preseason honor, as TopDrawerSoccer issued their preseason top-100 players earlier this week. The list excludes incoming freshmen, but there are still thousands of players across D1 women's soccer. TDS ranked Cherry 73rd among them. She was the only Louisville representative, but joins 25 other players from the ACC, including 14 of the top-25 and seven of the top-ten. Cherry is the 17th-ranked player listed as a defender on their roster. She'll shore up the defense for Louisville, and may even play a significant role in the offense once more, as she was second on the team in goals last season with six. 

Louisville will need a strong defense, as they may find themselves in quite a few rock fights this season. The Cards return their leading goal scorer in Mackenzie Geigle, but she had just seven last year. They lost their leading assister in Brooke Dardano and they'll see quite a few changes in the midfield and forward positions. Looking for big steps up from Fina Davy and Amelia Swinarski in their sophomore seasons, the Cards will also depend on Monmouth transfer Liza Suydam to make the offense go. 

All that gets underway this evening at 7:30 PM. The match will be carried on SECN+, which you should have the same access to for streaming as ACC Network Extra. 

Until next time, Go Cards!

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