Louisville women's basketball -- Know the Foe -- From Thursday practice/presser with Paulie -- THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

JUST ADDED: PAULIE REPORT FROM THURSDAY PRACTICE AND PRESSERS


CARDS FACE ROBERT MORRIS FRIDAY AT NOON

Good morning Cardinal fans! 

David Watson with you this morning, per Paulie request, to give you a little bit of a preview of the Louisville women's basketball squad's first game in the NCAA Tournament. Writing this article is a nice change of pace from my frantic opening NCAA Tournament weekend marathon party plans and preparation. 

Louisville begins their quest to travel to Tampa and the Final Four tomorrow against the Robert Morris Colonials in the KFC YUM! Center. It's the first matchup against the Colonials, out of the Northeastern Conference in Louisville women's basketball history.

So, what do we need to know about the Colonials? Here a dossier. 

Robert Morris went 22-10 during the regular and conference tournament slate. They were 16-2 in the NEC and won the tournament as a #1 seed taking down Mt. St. Mary 69-65 and Saint Francis 69-54. 

Robert Morris and Louisville had no common opponents in the 2018-19 season. This will be the furthest south the Colonials have traveled in games this year. 

It was a rough start to the season for the Colonials. They began 1-7, but began to get it together as the schedule morphed into conference play and finished 8-1. As they go into the NCAA as a #16 seed, this is their sixth overall appearance in the NCAA and third in the last four years. 

Their mascot is the patriotic, slightly neurotic looking Romo. Not to be confused with ex-Dallas QB and TV analyst Tony Romo. 

The Colonials prefer a slower pace, averaging about 63 points a game while allowing just 55. They are top 25 ranked in creating opponent turnovers and getting steals. The only real bad "beat" I can find on them was the 92-63 loss at Iowa.


Nneka Ezeigbo, a 6'2" post player, is the main offensive and rebounding weapon for RMU. She's a junior, from Ewing N.J. and averages 12.6 points per game and 7.8 rebounds.

Honoka Ikematsu, from Japan, she is the leading three-point shooter for the Colonials and puts up about five a game (162 on the season). She's made 53 on the year. I wonder if she knows Norika Konno, a recent Louisville signer from the land of the rising sun?

Freshman guard Isabella Posset has been named to the All-NEC Rookie team and leads RMU in assists and steals.




WATSON ANALYSIS

Louisville should win this one fairly easy if they come out and play Louisville basketball.

With Walz not on the bench, Coach Norman and staff will most likely try to regulate minutes to the starters, play Carter and Fuehring sparingly, as they come off injuries and apply that scary good Louisville defense.

I know, it's tournament time and anything can happen, but, I see the Cards advancing to Sunday pretty easily.


CARDINAL COUPLE TOURNAMENT CHALLENGE

Paulie wanted me to remind you that Cardinal Couple is holding a NCAA Women's tournament pick 'em challenge.

With that now done, pick wisely, with your head and not heart and good luck. You can put your entry in the comments section or e-mail Paulie at cardinalcouple@twc.com

For questions, or to submit a bracket, go to tournament director Jared Anderson. His e-mail is eupherjared@gmail.com

Have a fun weekend and thanks again to Paulie for giving me a chance to grace these majestic pages once again !! 

David Watson


Paulie From Media/Practice Day at the KFC YUM! Center

Sonya and I joined TCZs and Cardinal Couple Radio regular Daryl Foust to attend the Thursday presser for Louisville head coach Jeff Walz and players Asia Durr, Sam Fuehring and Arica Carter. Here are the audios from each: 

LINK:  Jeff Walz Thursday presser

Coach seemed to be in a good mood and engaged in playful banter with Paulie near the end of the presser. 

LINK:  Arica, Asia and Sam at 3/21/19 presser

All three seemed ready to go and discussed the upcoming game, their status and their preparation for the game against Robert Morris Friday.

Practice was light but spirited with the Cards encouraging each other a lot and hitting a ton of shots. A good sign...Arica worked out, while we were there with trainer Kaitlynn Jones and a stretch rope. 

paulie
xxxxx


PHOTOS FROM THURSDAY

Arica warming up

Team Drills I

Team Drills II

Coach Walz with Beth Mowins

Sonya and Daryl

GAMEDAY -- Sunday Cardinal Couple

WBB Gameday!

Well, it's a Sunday in January, that means it must be game day for the Women's Basketball Team.  OK, it's not that regular, but it's a pretty common occurrence, to be sure.

Today they take on the Pitt Panthers at home in the KFC Yum! Center.  The men dispatched Pitt yesterday on the home hardwood after a bit of a slow start, let's hope the same slow start affliction doesn't stifle early game statistics for the women.

Many of our normal assumptions about good teams and bad in the ACC are being put the test this year, but...well...Pitt, bless their hearts, are just not a great team this year.  They haven't yet found victory in the ACC, yet, and only chalked up a thoroughly mediocre 9-5 non-conference record.  Some of those losses are to some pretty unimpressive teams, like Youngstown St. and Georgetown (this one by almost 30 points!).  WVU took the win over the Panthers by more than 30, though Pitt did keep it close with UCF.  The best wins on their schedule would be Cincinnati and Arkansas.

Maybe the biggest challenge for the Cardinals today will be to not look past this team to the big
matchup on Thursday against UConn.  Otherwise, Pitt doesn't look to be much of a real threat, looking up from the bottom of the league.

The Cards need to show up, play their game, and be present in the moment.  Play the game plan, and then, only once this game is over, start thinking about UConn.  Let's hope they continue to work on solid rebounding, which has been something of a bugaboo for this team of late, because they will absolutely need it in future games, or get risked being run off the court.

I suspect this will be an opportunity for continued development of some of the players we don't see on the court as often.  What may have even more impact on team development would be to see some more extended time for Kylee Shook, and Mykasa Robinson. The two of them have been seeing significant playing time, and you've been able to see them develop and improve, let's hope that they get extended time on the court again today to hone their craft in real-game situations, that will only help the Cards' depth heading into the later stages of the season.


Tip off today is at 2 p.m., with video available for you out-of-towners on the ACC Network Extra.

Tennis

The men's tennis team were in action in Florida against William and Mary, though as of the time of this writing, I haven't seen any results.


The women open serve at 3pm against Cincinnati here in Louisville at the Bass-Rudd Tennis Center. The women's team is 4-0 in their season so far, starting off with a bang. Let's see how well they can maintain this as the season moves on.

Vacation

On a personal note, I'll be absent from these pages for a couple of weeks as I'm heading off on a two-week vacation down under. Unfortunately, I've been saying I'll be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean during the UConn game, but if I'm doing my timezone conversions correctly, we'll be on the ground in Sydney by that point (though it will already be Feb. 1st for me).

In any case, I'll be doing my best to keep up with all Cardinals Athletics while I'm gone, and I'll be looking to the pages of Cardinal Couple and it's daily update to do that.


Think about this, however. By the time I return (Feb. 14th), the Softball and Lacrosse seasons will already be underway, that's how close Spring sports are getting.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour: Part I

"He's doing what, Edith? Awww, jeez."

Also because of vacation, yesterday was my last CCRH for a few weeks. We're hopeful that the Monk can return to fill in engineering duties while I'm gone, or perhaps someone else that has been trained on the systems at WCHQ. Just promise me, all of you all, that you won't let Paulie at the knobs, dials, and sliders.


In any case, we had a fun morning in the studio, with Mike Gilpatrick of River City Cards joining us for the hour. Case and Jared were both consumed with job duties. We had some great discussion and analysis of the play of the Women's Basketball Team, and you can learn about a couple of the contributions to science of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (he's the guy that figured out the formulas that explain why you have low tire pressure in the winter months, even without any leaks in your tires).


In any case, if you missed it, you can check it out on Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/WCHQfm/videos/392572177968848/

I'll see you in late February!


--
JMcA

(Thanks to Paulie for catching the truncated article and fixing it up a bit...here's the bit he added for the CCRH.  He picked a different digression than I did to highlight, proving, perhaps, that I need to stay more on topic)


THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR: PART II

Linked up below is THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR from yesterday. We had River City Cards editor-in-chief Mike Gilpatrick in studio with us and covered a lot of women's basketball and threw out a query on how camels got to Australia.

We came up with Clemson as our "surprise" ACC WBB squad this year, Virginia Tech as our "not ready for prime time" squad and Notre Dame as the probable ACC regular season champ. Got a take? Let us know in the comments.

Have a listen

LINK: THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR 1/26/19

JMcA

The End of the Fall is Nigh -- Sunday Cardinal Couple

November is Donation Month for Cardinal Couple. If you would like to help us continue what we do here -- in 2019 -- please send whatever amount you want to. You can use Pay-Pal, but, if possible, we're prefer you to mail your donations to:



CARDINAL COUPLE
P.O. BOX 91521
LOUISVILLE, KY  40291

Thank you!  

*********BREAKING NEWS**********

Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra fired Bobby Petrino Sunday morning after a 2-8 start to the season. Here's what he had to say about the move.

“We want to thank Bobby for guiding our football program to some of the better seasons we have had historically at UofL during his two separate tenures here,” Tyra said. “However, at this time we feel the program needs different leadership and we owe it to our student-athletes and fans to get this turned around.”

Tyra had talked throughout the season about his hope for a turnaround under Petrino's leadership. He had said he didn't want to make a change during the season, but events of the last couple of weeks made an immediate decision more necessary.

“I did not have the confidence that it was going to happen next season without a change and it needs to start happening now," Tyra said. "We expect to determine a new head coach soon to restore our football program to national prominence.”

Action Yesterday

Only one sport was in action yesterday, Swimming and Diving was competing in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge up at Purdue in West Lafayette.  This isn't specifically a UofL event, but it truly is an event between the conferences.  Coaches are named for the conference teams, with Arthur Albiero being an Assistant Coach for the ACC squad, and all-star participants are selected from conference schools to compete on behalf of the conference.  11 UofL athletes were picked to compete, a veritable who's who of Cardinals Swimming and Diving with Mariia Astashkina, Sophie Cattermole, Mallory Comerford, Molly Fears, Alina Kendzior and Grace Oglesby on the women's side...nearly all names that have been mentioned here at Cardinal Couple a number of times before.

Perhaps the least frequently mentioned name is Mariia Astashkina, from Moscow, who is competing primarily in the breast stroke in her sophomore season as a Cardinal swimmer.  Five guys are representing the ACC as well, again, mostly names you've heard before if you follow the Swimming and Diving to any significant degree; Marcelo Acosta, Nick Albiero, Andrej Barna, Zach Harting and Evgenii Somov.

After the first day of swimming, the Men are neck and neck with the Big Ten at 85 points, and the ACC at 82.  The women's battle is not as close, with the Big Ten in the lead 123-44.  The event continues today.

Action Today

Rowing is participating in the latest of the wonderfully named rowing events, the Rivanna Romp, in Earlysville, VA.

Men's Soccer is competing at noon for the ACC Championship.  They tangle with North Carolina, in Cary NC.  This matchup is a 4 seed, Louisville, vs the 2 seed Tarheels.  In national rankings, UNC is #4 in the coach's poll, while UofL sits in 10th.  This one gets a bit of a step of from the typical ACC Network Extra and will be on ESPNU.

Also in action today, a bit of an injury depleted UofL Volleyball squad will be taking on Wake Forest at 1 p.m.  This one is available on the ACC Network Extra.

A quick run down on the injuries that we're aware of.  Alexis Hamilton has been out all season, going down with an ACL tear right before the season opener.  Kelly O'Neil has been out for an extended period already with a back injury, details are not known.  And in the past week, Emily Scott and Melanie McHenry have both been either out, or at least on limited playing regimes due to knee injuries (we have a report of a stress fracture for Scott, and a strained patella tendon for McHenry, neither are anything official).  

The positive aspect of this has been that these injuries have been spread around among different positions, hitting an outside hitter, a middle hitter/blocker, and two defensive specialists.  Starting the season, we were commenting on the depth of the team, with discussions about who will get playing time both in the middle between the triumvirate of Jasmine Bennett, Emily Scott, and Piper Roe, and on defensive with what seemed to be the absurdly high number of DSes on the roster.  Jasmine Bennett went out for a bit with a strained abdomen a little while back, but has returned to 100%, only for Emily Scott's sidelining with a knee injury, so we've been glad to have 3 middles that were ready and capable of playing at a D1 volleyball level.

Along with the departure of Maggie Mullen from the team, the injuries at DS have left the team eyeing the remaining DSes closely.  Freshman Mia Stander has stepped up and proven herself capable of taking on the role beyond any shadow of a doubt.  Akela Yuhl, sophomore, has stepped up and filled the role well, and we still have Natalie Palastro who could step into the role as well, so we're still in a good situation for DSes, but I certainly wouldn't want to lose any more to injury.

Today might be a good day to spread some of the playing time around and develop some of those
extra players that have spent time in the wings ready to step up when their number is called.  Wake Forest sits in the bottom quarter of the ACC rankings at 4-11 in conference, 9-18 overall.  Wake has dropped decisions against Air Force, UNC Greensboro, and Ohio University.

The VolleyCards are the lone "fall sport" that we regularly cover that is still in action...with WSOC and Field Hockey finished for the season.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

Three of the knuckleheads graced the magnificent media mansion on Mellwood yesterday.  Paulie, Jared, and I held down the fort and had a good discussion where we wrapped up the Field Hockey and Women's Soccer seasons.  And, yes, we even griped a bit about people getting the name of our teams wrong.  We aren't "The Cardinal", that's Stanford, and we aren't "The Lady Cards".

We discussed Volleyball, Women's Basketball, and even had a little bit of fun with Rowing event names.

A special "Thank You" to WCHQ for giving us this great venue to relay the joy and excitement of Louisville women's athletics.  

Catch the replay fun at:

https://www.facebook.com/WCHQfm/videos/2199765830347342/

-- 

JMcA

Louisville Women's Basketball off to slowest start since 2000-01 -- TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

CARDS 1-4 START WORST SINCE 2000-01

The inglorious start by Jeff Walz's WBB squad in the 2015-16 is the slowest start a Louisville women's basketball team has endured since the 2000-01 season....where the Cards began the season 0-5.

It was Martin Clapp's first year a solo coach of the squad...previously he and wife Sara White had been co-head coaches of the team since the 1997-98 season. You can see (and hear) White these days on Louisville WBB home broadcasts on ESPN3. Clapp's LINKED IN page states he is an assistant coach on the Purdue women's basketball team...I failed to notice him on the sidelines, though, when the Cards met them in Estero and Purdue's WBB website doesn't list him on the staff...

The 2000-01 squad started out in the Time Warner Classic in Lincoln, Nebraska and fell 78-67 to #24 UC Santa Barbara and 76-71 to Oakland. We're pretty sure this wasn't Al Davis' Raiders from the bay...but Louisville returned home 0-2 and then was faced with traveling to Cancun, Mexico for the Torneo Cancun de Basquetbol Thanksgiving Holiday Tournament. Louisville ran into #15 Texas there and took a 73-59 loss. The next day they played Minnesota and were on the short end of a 68-64 score. 

The squad finally got their first home game on Nov 30th against WKU in Freedom Hall and the Toppers took a 86-79 win. Finally, on Dec 2nd, the Cards recorded their first win of the season...hosting Illinois State and getting a 87-59 victory. 

Scintillating Sara 

That team did go on to beat UK a week later and ended up with a 19-10 record and 14-2 in Conference USA...earning an NCAA bid against Xavier but falling out in the first round. That team had steady guards Sara Nord and Marju Sober...plus Shamika Ingram pounding the boards. Clapp was named C-USA Coach of the Year for turning them around after a shaky start. Ah, the days of Charlotte, St. Louis and Tulane...

So....take heart, fans of this current squad. Things can get better after rough starts and this young squad is showing improvement since the opener against Cal. The talent is there, the lessons continue and the players have lost none of their desire or confidence. They may stumble a bit more....MSU is 20th. in the nation and UK is devastating people in Memorial Coliseum these days...but the clouds will eventually clear and the sun will shine on these talented women. 

Louisville faces Michigan State next in East Lansing...a 7:30 tip on ESPN2. It's part of the ACC v BIG 10 Challenge. 

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

TALKING WIDE NET...V'BALL HOLDING A PRESSER.

Can you name this lovely
kill artist from the past?

Obsequiously designed to fan the fervor of their NCAA inclusion and hosting coup, Louisville Volleyball has called a presser today at 12:15 in the YUM Practice Center on Floyd Street. They'll get in a practice, too at 1 p.m.

Details are that Anne Kordes, Katie George and Erin Fairs will be available to talk life, love, Volleyball and Belmont. 

We'll work on a few totally irrelevant and confounding questions to present to the representatives of the #15 team in the land. Maybe I'll check to see if I made the cut to get a media pass for Friday and Saturday also. With assoc. SID Nancy Worley...you just never know. My esteemed colleague Worldwide took what appeared to be a safer route...he applied for tickets and was originally told he did not get them...but found out that he did get them...so he will be running the steps leading cheers. Sonja prefers to watch Volleyball on television...as a former outside hitter, she likes the overall view of how defense sets up while the dig and pass develop.

I wonder if they'll let me bring Bill The Goat? He's always such a hit in the media room...especially if there's a buffet set up.  

I also wonder where they would set up media seating in an arena that is...well...cozy on the baselines. I'd volunteer to watch from Walz's balcony that overlooks the court....if needed.

Keeping it real on Floyd. Couplin'.
paulie
xxxxx