Season Review: Volleyball -- TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 Season Review: Volleyball

A shortened season doesn't mean a bad season as we learned from Louisville Volleyball. The Cards had another successful season, capping it off with their sixth Sweet Sixteen appearance.

Like the other fall sports, volleyball split their season in half and saw the NCAA Tournament held in the spring. The Cards posted a 5-2 fall record, a 9-0 spring record, and then 1-1 in the tournament for a 15-3 year.

COVID-19 was quick to hit Louisville's season. After a season opening loss to Notre Dame, the Cards saw a delay before picking up action again. They traveled to Boston College for a two-match series sweep before returning home to sweep Syracuse in a two-match series. The fall season wrapped up with a trip to Pitt, where the two rivals split the series.

The Cards were set to pick back up in late February, but another COVID-19 issue led to a delayed start. Wake Forest came to town with the Cards winning a pair of matches. A road trip was on the schedule next with the Cards taking down Duke twice and Florida State once with Clemson and Virginia having to bow out of their matches for various reasons.

One final home stand at L&N Federal Credit Union Arena was next with Louisville taking down Georgia Tech and NC State before hitting the road to cap off the regular season with wins against Miami and North Carolina.

Louisville earned the 11-seed in the NCAA Tournament and a first round bye. They met San Diego in their first match of the tournament. San Diego took the first set before the Cards would win three straight. The Cards then met up with 6-seed Washington and held a 2-1 set lead and a 7-1 and 11-5 lead in the final set before faltering down the stretch.

Washington would go on to beat Pitt in their next match to advance to the Final Four, where they fell to eventual national champion Kentucky. The Cards and Cats did not play this season.

Statically, Louisville had a great season with 804 kills and a .274 attack percentage while holding opponents to a .143 attack percentage. The Cards tallied 754 assists, 83 service aces, and 771 digs.

Blocking was one of the strong suits for the Cards who were the highest ranked teams in blocks and blocks per set. Amaya Tillman averaged 1.65 blocks per set, putting her third in the country. She tallied 100 blocks on the year.

Alexis Hamilton led the back row with 212 digs but had plenty of help from Tori Dilfer, who had 114.

Offensively, four Cards powered through, which we discussed during the quiz last week. Anna DeBeer led the team with 174 kills and Aiko Jones was close behind with 168. Claire Chaussee and Anna Stevenson had 146 and 145, respectively.

With only Alexis Hamilton and Piper Roe graduating and no known players transferring out, the Cards return an highly-skilled lineup with plenty of postseason experience. The last two tournaments saw the Cards make the Sweet Sixteen twice and Elite Eight once.

Coach Dani Busboom continues to impress with her team consistently getting better each year and becoming a recognized powerhouse. We should see matches against tough teams such as Kentucky, WKU, and Dayton resume in the fall.

Happy Tuesday and Go Cards!

Jared 

Volleyball Advances to Sweet Sixteen -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Cards Take Down Toppers in Five Sets

In what was one of the closest matches Louisville has played this season, the Cards took the floor in Diddle Arena for the second straight night and came away with their second win of the tournament over the hosting WKU Hilltoppers. Louisville's second win puts them tied with Louisville Men's Soccer for the most wins by a UofL fall team in this season's NCAA tournaments. One more win would bring them level with Field Hockey for being closest to the championship game. A lot of things had changed since Louisville beat WKU 3-1 in L&N FCU earlier this season. Melanie McHenry's career ended, Louisville changed lineups multiple times, WKU refused to lose any other games, and Louisville struggled through a few slumps. Everything goes out the window in the tournament, though.

I mentioned this looked like one of Louisville's closest matches of the year, so let's take a look at why. First, the set scores of the first four sets: 21-25, 25-22, 25-21, 21-25. The fifth set looks a bit lopsided at 15-5, but that can easily happen. If a team jumps out to a run, it's hard to recover in a race to fifteen. Now let's look at some key stats. I'll list Louisville's number first in all of these. Kills: 58-58; Errors: 30-31; Assists: 56-58; Hitting: .179-.162; Aces: 6-6. Those numbers are all extremely close over a five set match. Then we get to a couple of critical differences. Louisville outblocked the Toppers 17-6 and had only four service errors compared to ten from WKU. The blocking stat is a bit misleading, but the difference in service errors is a pure difference in points. WKU gave away six more points than the Cards. As for the blocks, Louisville was able to knock home 11 points on WKU attempted kills, but the close errors stat shows that Louisville was not necessarily capitalizing on all of those opportunities as they had more unforced errors. Either way, scoring a point defensively is still a positive. 

Unfortunately, after a big dinner and having settled in on the couch for this one and the basketball game in split screen, I fell asleep sometime early in the fourth set and awoke to the match being over. Without the benefit of a play-by-play in the box score, I can't give a good recap of how the match actually looked at the end. Perhaps Jeff can fill us in today on the show. I can note that after the first set, it was clear that this match would be close. Both teams were playing well and WKU simply looked like the better team in the set, running out a 9-4 advantage to win. Early in the second, as well, it looked as though Louisville's susceptibility to runs would put the Cards in danger as they went down early. However, the Cards made a run of their own to take the lead and carried it through to the end of the set. In the third, Louisville took a fairly big lead before WKU pulled back to lose close. Louisville led 2-1 and it looked like they may be able to escape cleanly.

From there, my recollection is limited to what the UofL Volleyball Twitter account can tell me. The Cards and Toppers played the first half of the fourth set very closely, finding themselves at 10-9. Louisville earned a decent advantage and worked up an 18-14 lead. However, that susceptibility to runs I mentioned came into play as a 7-0 run put the Hilltoppers at 22-19 before Louisville could stop the bleeding. The Cards were unable to recover from that run and lost the set to move to the decider. As I mentioned before, when a team jumps out to a big lead in the fifth set, all bets are off. Louisville quickly found themselves ahead 6-1 and moved that lead to a 9-2 advantage before ultimately claiming the set 15-5. Some may call that an anticlimactic ending, but we'll take whatever win we can get in the NCAA Tournament.

Perhaps Louisville's biggest achievements one the night were their ability to play through the outsides rather than the middle and their resiliency against WKU clearly putting them out of system. Louisville had 56 assists on the night and Tori Dilfer finished with only 46. She was forced into 13 digs, which is an extremely high number for your setter, and she dumped home a pair of kills. In fact, Dilfer finished with more digs than Alexis Hamilton's 12, which is crazy to think that Louisville could recover from that when we've previously seen them so cemented to the way they've played. The Cards also had only three attackers hit positive. Claire Chaussee, Amber Stivrins, and Aiko Jones led the way, with Jones leading all scorers in the match with 20 kills. Chaussee and Stivrins had 14 and 13 respectively. Anna Stevenson and Amaya Tillman were ineffective on offense, combining for nine kills and 12 errors on 29 attempts, but they made their presence known defensively. The two finished with a combined two solo blocks and 13 block assists. Jones was also in on the block party with one solo and five assists of her own.

The Cards will take this win and send the Hilltoppers home with just two losses on the year, both to Louisville. Louisville now advances to their fifth Sweet Sixteen in program history and the road only gets tougher from here. It is safe to say that you could call this season a success, and you can probably consider anything beyond last night's match "playing with house money." That said, why not continue reaching for the stars. The Cards will advance to take on the Longhorns of Texas, the overall number two seed in the NCAA tournament. Tough draw. The Longhorns lost only three matches in the regular season and they were against Baylor (the number one seed), Stanford (the number three seed), and Rice (another tournament team). In 23 wins this season, the Longhorns have lost just nine sets. They're good. Date and time have yet to be determined for the Sweet Sixteen matchup, but we'll be sure to let you know when we find out.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

Do you think we'll have anything to talk about this week? Jeff and I are alone in the studio this time, but with basketball having played a pair and Jeff fresh off of his return from Bowling Green, I'm sure we can find some content. Tune in to the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour at 11AM on WCHQ FM as we bring you the joy and excitement of Louisville women's athletics. WCHQ is available at 100.9 FM, the WCHQ app, wchqfm.com, and on Facebook Live. 

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-

Led by WBB's 36-point win, Cards Have Busy Friday -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Field Hockey Falls to UNC

After picking up a much needed victory over Syracuse in the ACC tournament to get the late season back on track and pad the NCAA tournament resume once more, Louisville ran into the buzzsaw that is North Carolina. The Tarheels have been the number one team in the country for most of the year, currently sitting undefeated, and continued to show why yesterday. North Carolina jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first quarter and never looked back. The Heels scored once more in the fourth before Louisville was able to grab a goal to keep the final score a bit kinder at 3-1.

Bethany Russ was the goalscorer in this one, picking up her tenth goal of the year off of corner assist by Mercedes Pastor. It was one of Louisville's seven corner attempts, and the inability to capitalize on those corner opportunities has plagued the Cards all year long. Though the Cards were only 1-7, it should also be said that UNC was only 1-6. While they have struggled in scoring on penalty corners this season, Louisville has at least generally been equally as stingy on the defensive side.

Louisville now sits at 15-5 as they await their fate for the NCAA tournament, but three of their five losses have come in the last five games. Given that the Cards made up for a road loss to William and Mary with a road win over Duke in the next game and immediately followed a loss to Syracuse with a win over the Orange, perhaps things aren't as doom and gloom as they seem. Louisville still sits at 6th in the country based on the last rankings and it would be very hard to see them not getting into the tournament. Selection for the 18 team tournament is tomorrow, and we'll be sure to keep you updated on the future of the Cards.

Volleyball Picks Up Hard Fought Win in Miami

Seemingly unable to play a match that is not a barnburner this season, Louisville Volleyball went on the road to Miami and grabbed a five set win that may have gone forever if you had to win by two sets. Each team alternated set wins, and the fifth set went into extra points. In total, the sets were decided by only 20 points. The minimum number is 10, and the first set score was 25-16. As you might expect based on such a tight score, the two teams were also well matched in most other stats. Louisville had only eleven more kills and two more blocks, while Miami had three more aces and the two teams tied in errors. 

Louisville was once again led offensively by the trio that has stepped up in a big way since the loss of Melanie McHenry. Aiko Jones led all scorers in the match with 20 kills, but Claire Chaussee was only one behind her (and still ahead of every Miami player) at 19. Amber Stivrins again chipped, using the most of her playing time, adding 12 kills. Aiko Jones also added 5 blocks and two aces, beaten in the former category only by the six laid down by Anna Stevenson, who continued to be a rock in the middle. Tori Dilfer was unable to put down any of her attack attempts, finishing with a negative hitting percentage by erring on one of the seven attempts, but she did add 57 of the team's 63 assists while grabbing an ace, three blocks, and nine digs. Shannon Shields did not play, and perhaps Jeff has more information about that. Alexis Hamilton, as always, held down the back row with 17 digs.

The win was much needed by the Cards, who used it to stop a 3-game skid. With the victory, Louisville also guarantees it won't finish the major road trip winless. Louisville has one more game on this trip when they head just up the state from Miami to take on the Seminoles of Florida State in Tallahassee tomorrow at 1PM. After the FSU match, Louisville will get three more matches at home, all rematches, before the last match of the regular season in Pittsburgh. That match against the Panthers may not be for the conference title as many expected, with Louisville now sitting at 9-4 in conference, but it will still be a major matchup in Louisville's NCAA tournament picture. Until then, the Cards have four more matches to work to get back on track as the regular season draws to a close.

Louisville Thumps Murray State in Basketball

After playing strong defense and leading by 25 points at the half, Louisville used a 20 point run in the third quarter to completely squash any thoughts the Racers had about a potential comeback. The Cards went on to win 76-40 in their second game of the season, with no player scoring more than 14 points. Louisville will get a bigger break after this matchup, playing next on November 14th against the Chippewas of Central Michigan in the KFC Yum! Center.

Louisville opened last night's game with what may be the worst possible outcome on offense... a pair of missed free throws. (I couldn't decide if missing free throws or a turnover was worse. Let me know what you think.) Just thirty seconds later, Elizabeth Dixon would again get the opportunity to open the scoring as she stepped to the line and sunk both. Remember that thing I said about turnovers, though? They were just waiting for the Cards to score. Louisville turned the ball over on three straight possessions, gave up two offensive rebounds and fouled on a shot. How Murray State was unable to score in that time is beyond me, but Louisville would finally score again nearly two minutes after their first points. Despite the fact that the Cards would go to the quarter break leading 16-4, they certainly couldn't be happy, having given up 11 turnovers in the first ten minutes of the game, including three by both Norika Konno and Jazmine Jones. Konno would go on to finish the game with only three turnovers. Jaz picked up two more.

In the second quarter, the Cardinal defense fell off just a tad, but it may have only been a product of a faster overall pace of play. Louisville scored 22 in the second quarter, turning more of their turnovers from the previous quarter into points instead. Going into the break up 38-13 would usually lead a coach to a generally positive halftime speech. Going into the break up 38-13 with 14 turnovers and 7-12 from the free throw line is not going to garner priase from Jeff Walz. One positive from the half was Dana Evans showing that she is ready for a major offensive role, scoring 10 points in the half with 7 coming in just over a minute as the clock wound down in the second quarter.

In the first three and a half minutes of the third quarter, the Cards and Racers traded baskets, with a Murray State three pointer cutting the lead to 21. Louisville decided that was quite enough of that. Over the next five minutes, the Cards methodically demolished the will of the Racers, allowing Murray State to score no points and extending their lead to 41. After a couple of more baskets, Louisville carried a 40 point lead into the fourth quarter. The final quarter saw a large contingent of non-starters grab court time as Murray State won the period 17-13. By that time, the damage had long been done, though, and the Cards coasted to 2-0 while the Racers dropped to 0-1 on the year.

Kylee Shook made the most of her time in the second half, putting up all 13 of her points in 12 second half minutes. Shook also grabbed a double-double, scoring 13, rebound 12, and adding in a block and a steal. Three other players--Evans, Jones, and Elizabeth Balogun--finished with double-digit points. No Cardinal player saw more than 22 minutes of court time. Norika Konno did her best to make up for her 3 first quarter turnovers by finishing the game with 4 points, 4 rebounds, and 5 assists. She'll have to make more of her shots (just 2-7) for Louisville to get the most out of its offense, but it's good to see a freshman recover after a rough opening stanza. 

The CASE Report

Paulie alluded to The CASE Report earlier this week when he gave the FRED Report after Louisville's opening game. For a brief refresher, here's how the CASE Report works. CASE stands for Care, Assists, Steals, and Efficiency. All of the categories are stat based, with a pair of thresholds for each granting the possibility for letter improvement. We'll get through this one with some explanation.

C-Care: The Care section focuses on Louisville's turnovers. Generally, there will be a point awarded for Louisville turning the ball over 65% of the opponent's season average in turnovers forced (we expect Louisville's offense to be better than the opponent's defense) and another point awarded for turning the ball over less than the opponent. Since this is Murray State's first game, Louisville actually set their season average at 21 forced turnovers. I'm actually going to break from the standard of the scoring here, because even though Louisville forced 24 turnovers from the Racers, I cannot award a letter for 11 first quarter turnovers and 21 in the game. No letter.

A-Assists: This section awards a letter for assists based stats, namely assist percentage and assist-to-turnover ratio. As always, a huge turnover number is going to put this stat in a hole, but the game of basketball is pretty intertwined so it's ok if my stats are too. Louisville finished with 16 assists on 29 made baskets, which is not bad and is over the 50% threshold. However, it yields an assist-to-turnover ratio of less than 1. We're going for 2. Lowercase 'a'.

S-Steals: The most straightforward of the CASE Report. Half a letter for getting more than 7.5 steals, another half for getting more steals than the opponent. The Cards grabbed 12 in this one, just edging the 11 put up by Murray State. Capital 'S'.

E-Efficiency: This is where the CASE and FRED reports overlap a tad. We're looking at shooting efficiencies in this one. Specifically, we're looking for better than 45% from the floor and better than 75% from the line. Louisville finished with 6-26 shooting from beyond the arc, driving their overall shooting percentage all the way down to 40.8%. They also struggled to recover from 5 missed free throws in the first quarter, finishing at just 66.7% from the line. No letter.

In the opening CASE Report of the year, Louisville finishes with just _-a-S-_. The flashy final score and 20-0 run in the third make this game seem like a nice win, but the stats show that Louisville did not have a great night. Everything that Louisville did poorly, Murray State just did worse. It's only the second game of the season, but the Cards definitely have some work to do to get to the dominance they're looking for this year.


They said it: 

LINK: POST GAME WALZ

LINK: POST GAME SHOOK AND JONES

LINK (AUDIO ONLY)  : MURRAY ST. HEAD WBB COACH RECHELLE TURNER POST GAME

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

I'm out once more, but the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour lives on. We are still exploring our options for the future of the show, so keep an eye out, but for the time being, the show still comes to you live from WCHQ FM. Today, join Paulie and Jeff as they are both back into their wheelhouses with volleyball and basketball fully in swing. They'll bring you those and more at 11AM on WCHQ. Catch the show at 100.9 FM, the WCHQ App, wchqfm.com, or on Facebook Live.

HERE'S THE LINK FROM TODAY'S SHOW:
LINK: THE CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR 11/9/19

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-

Volleyball Falls; Swimming Sweeps; Basketball Eats Lunch -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Volleyball Falls in Five at Boston College

Louisville continues to have trouble with teams that we may not expect this year, and it manifested itself last night in the form of a 5-set loss on the road against Boston College. The Eagles, who have been a surprise team this year, drew level with the Cards in the ACC standings at 8-3 with a victory last night. On the other hand, Louisville continues their up and down season and now sees themselves fall even farther away from the top of the league as they sit 3 games behind Pittsburgh.

Louisville opened the match with a convincing victory in the first set, using a big run to open the score during the middle of the set and not looking back. Louisville went on to win the first 25-18, with Mia Stander putting down an ace as the game point. The second and third sets were very similar to the first, though Louisville was unable to pull out a streak to extend a lead. As such, the Cards fell in tight sets 26-28 and 23-25. The fourth set looked as though Louisville had finally shaken off the rust and would be cruising to victory. The Cards jumped out to a five point lead before reaching ten points and used another five point run in the middle of the set to open it up even farther on the way to a 25-13 victory. In the fifth set, however, it was Boston College that found a point streak. The Eagles jumped out to a four point lead early, which Louisville was unable to overcome. BC took the set 15-8 and the match 3-2.

On the match, Louisville actually committed 3 fewer errors and hit .66 percentage points better than Boston College. As it goes, though, Louisville's worst sets came during Boston College's best, with the Cards hitting .206, .172, and .130 in their losing sets compared to .441 and .330 in the ones they won. Louisville also outblocked, outkilled, and outaced the Eagles in the loss. One of Louisville's critical sore spots throughout the season, though, does not show up on the typical box score, and it came back once more yesterday. The Cards committed 11 service errors, while the Eagles committed only four. Louisville also committed four block errors, some coming at inopportune times in that fifth set.

Louisville was led in kills by Aiko Jones, Amber Stivrins, and Claire Chaussee, who have become the usual suspects since McHenry went down. The three combined for 43 of Louisville's 63 kills. They also combined for 18 of the Card's 23 errors, which is typical for heavy hitters. Anna Stevenson put up her typical contribution, with 6 kills and 10 block assists. Alexis Hamilton also performed her role as the stopper in the back with 20 digs. 

Clearly the Cards missed Worldwide's presence 

Despite Louisville's loss of ground on Pittsburgh, the Cards actually lucked out with the rest of the
league. Florida State and Notre Dame also took their third losses of the season, meaning only Pittsburgh has fewer losses than the Cards. Louisville is now a half game behind the 9-3 Seminoles and in a three-way tie for third with Notre Dame and Boston College. The Cards will get an opportunity to get back on track Sunday at 1PM when they take on the struggling Orange of Syracuse. We've seen Louisville unable to close the door against teams lower in the standings, though, so no team can be overlooked. Tomorrow's match will be available on ACC Network Extra, and should wrap up before the women's soccer game. 

Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving Sweep Notre Dame

Notre Dame, ranked in the top 25 in both men's and women's swimming, came down to the Ralph
Wright Natatorium to take on the top 15 ranked swimming and diving Cards. The Fighting Irish would be asked to turn around and head home with nearly identical losing scores. On the men's side, Louisville prevailed 168-132 while the women took the victory 162-138. In addition to the victories over the opponent, Louisville also claimed victories over a couple of records. On the diving side, Daniel Pinto earned an outstanding dive score off of the 3-meter board of 393.75, which is a new school record. The other record came from Sophie Cattermole, who broke the pool record en route to a win in the 1650 freestyle. Louisville swimming and diving will be back in action next week when they take on the Longhorns of Texas and the Indiana Hoosiers in a three-way meet in Bloomington.

Women's Basketball Hosts Tipoff Luncheon

Paulie and Daryl

A wonderful time at the UofL WBB Tip-Off Luncheon with 800 attendees, larrgest crowd in the history of the event.

Cardinal Couple was well represented with Paulie, Sonya, Worldwide Jeff and Daryl Foust in attendance.

The seniors were introduced and had some great remarks, including Jazmine Jones slight dig on Coach Walz and why Jess Laemmle wants to become a private eye.

The event is always a great one and we caught audio from Jeff Walz's pre-banquet presser and Sam Purcell's post banquet chat with Paulie. Links below:

WALZ

PURCELL

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

As you may have seen via Facebook, the sad announcement came through yesterday that our wonderful hosts, WCHQ FM, will be ceasing operations at the end of this year. What this means for the future of the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour is a bit complex. We all love to do the show, and we are looking into different options to continue, but it will be a change in venue and potentially format. Until the station closes shop on December 31st, though, the plan will be to continue to do the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour there.

Paulie and Jeff will play hosts today as they bring it back to the original show and bring in special guest Paige Sherrard.. Tune in for all of their musings about volleyball, soccer, women's basketball, and more. The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour airs live at 11 a.m. on WCHQ FM. Check out the show at 100.9 FM, wchqfm.com, the WCHQ App, or on Facebook Live.

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-

Another Undefeated Friday -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

For the second week in a row, I'm bringing you a column talking about three wins for Louisville women's athletics teams. Two of the three are the same, and soccer did still win their Thursday game, but this week we've added swimming and diving to the list. Let's get into yesterday's goings-on. 

Field Hockey Downs Wake Forest 3-0

For the second night in a row, a Louisville team on Floyd Street defeated Wake Forest to move to 9-1 on the season. Thursday, it was the women's soccer team in a comeback victory that Jared wrote about yesterday. Last night, it was the field hockey team handling the Demon Deacons with little opposition. The final score doesn't show a huge domination, though 3-0 is a strong victory, but the game stats indicate a lopsided game.

Louisville finished yesterday with only two more total shots than Wake, with that battle ending 8-6, but the Cards amassed 6 shots on goal while the Deacs could muster none at all. Even after earning four penalty corners, Wake was unable to pressure Hollyn Barr, who played the whole game and finished with no stats. Louisville scored in the first, third, and fourth quarters to keep up consistent pressure and converted on one of their three penalty corners. Barr's full game is her second in a row, perhaps indicating that Coach Sowry has made a decision about the position going forward. With Minrath on the bench, the team still has a solid option in the event that things go sideways, but Barr appears to have snagged the starting spot for the time being.

Yesterday's first goal came off of a penalty. With just two minutes left in the first quarter, Carter Ayers took the ball downfield and ended up earning a corner. She and Meghan Schneider would start the play and ultimately set up Mercedes Pastor to score her fourth goal of the season. The teams held onto the 1-0 score for about 19 minutes, going through the rest of the first, the entire second, and just the start of the third without any other goals. Madison Walsh changed that when she picked up her fifth goal of the year by tapping in a deep pass from Margot Lawn about a minute and a half into the second half. Three minutes into the final quarter, Walsh picked up a brace when she scored another tap in, this time from Bethany Russ.

All in all, Louisville had a stranglehold over Wake for the majority of the game and made sure to put away their chances. Scoring on 38% of your total shots and 50% of your shots on goal is a pretty efficient day. With Louisville's high volume offense, converting at that rate is going to continue to win a lot of games. Sprinkling in a defense that is capable of shutouts never hurts either. Louisville is back in action on Sunday when Penn State comes to town at Noon. That match will be available on ACC Network Extra.

Check out Paulie's interviews with Coach Sowry and Madison Walsh below. Videos of the interviews are available at gocards.com.

Coach Sowry Recaps the Win

Madison Walsh Talks About Her Double

 Volleyball Makes Short Work of Georgia Tech with Sweep

After pretty much dominating the first two sets, Louisville weathered a comedy of errors that took the third set to extra points before claiming victory over the Yellowjackets of Georgia Tech. After only a pair of errors total in the first two sets, Louisville committed 10 in the final set and hit negative in the third en route to a 27-25 set win. The Cards were saved only by even worse hitting by the Techies who committed 13 errors and also hit negative in that final set. Despite that final set, Louisville still managed to finish with .278 hitting for the night, showing just how strong those first two sets - .433 and .484, respectively - really were.

Louisville finished the match winning in every major category. The Cards won blocks 11-4, aces 4-2, had fewer service errors at 7-8, and fewer overall errors at 12-25. The teams finished tied at 39 kills, but the efficiency of Louisville's hitting was ultimately the difference. As was typical, Anna Stevenson was a brick wall, assisting on 5 Louisville blocks, and Emily Scott and Nena Mbonu got in on the block party as well by snagging a combined two solo and five block assists. Alexis Hamilton reliably led the team in digs, but also added a pair of unlikely receiving errors. Hot on her tail in digs were Melanie McHenry and Aiko Jones with 8.

Offensively, McHenry didn't have the best night, hitting only .125 on 24 attempts, earning 6 kills. Stevenson also finished with 6 kills on 20 attempts. Mbonu was second on the team last night with 8 kills on 18 attempts, a bit of a breakout night for her. Tori Dilfer continued to hold down her starting setter position, earning 30 of the Louisville's 34 assists on the night. The star of the night was undeniably Aiko Jones. Jones had the previously mentioned 8 digs, added 3 block assists and a solo block, and hit a whopping 13 kills with no errors on 18 attempts. She also chipped in with one of the four remaining assists for an all around outstanding night. Only one blemish came out of her night, and it has been one that has haunted for much of the season. Jones finished with 4 service errors and no aces. Despite that, I think when a player is pretty much unstoppable above the net, you'll live with some serves to Nowheresville.

Louisville's win pushes them to 10-3 on the season and 3-0 in conference. The Cards will have one more match at home against Clemson on Sunday at 1 before they hit the road for a massive four game road trip. Louisville will face Duke, Wake, Notre Dame, and Virginia Tech over that stretch before coming home for a big pair of matches against Virginia and Pitt. It's a bit early to be predicting such things, but the Pitt match 7 opponents away could be huge for the conference championship race. Louisville will need to show a bit more consistency and close out against weaker opponents to stay on track this season, but an ugly third set victory last night is still a victory. Cards and Tigers will get underway tomorrow at 1PM in L&N Federal Credit Union Arena and the match will be available on ACC Network Extra.

Swimming and Diving Opens Third Straight Season with Win

Louisville swimming and diving hosted Xavier in a one-on-one meet yesterday and both the men's and women's sides easily claimed victory. The women earned more than three times as many points as the Musketeers and won every race en route to a 194-62 victory. The Cards are beginning their first season without a "superstar" swimmer on the women's side since before Kelsi Worrell arrived, but there are plenty of swimmers ready to take up the mantle. In addition to every winner in the pool, Molly Fears showed yesterday that she still intends to be a champion from the board. She won the dives from both the 1 and 3 meter boards yesterday. Listing every winner for the Louisville swimmers would take quite some time, so let me just say that you should check out the overall results and see how balanced the winners for the Cards were yesterday. 

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

Due to the early start time for football, we will be without Jared and Paulie in the studio today, but Jeff and I will be joined by Daryl Foust to help keep us on track for the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour. We've got plenty of wins (our favorite thing to talk about) to discuss so we'll break down the weeks in soccer, volleyball, and field hockey before looking ahead to the upcoming weeks and a bit about the upcoming basketball season. Tune in at 11AM on WCHQ FM for the show. WCHQ is available at 100.9 FM, the WCHQ App, wchqfm.com, or on Facebook Live.

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-

Split Decisions as Two Cardinal Teams Open Season -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Field Hockey Shuts Out Indiana

After a somewhat disappointing offensive performance against Miami (OH) on Sunday, the Louisville Field Hockey team set out to learn some lessons from that game. The Cards were able to put those lessons learned to good use in their first opportunity, as they took it to Indiana yesterday, finishing the game with a final score of 5-0. Bethany Russ scored three goals for the Cards, her first career hat trick coming in the first game of her senior season. Also scoring for the Cards were Madison Walsh and Mercedes Pastor. Walsh also picked up an assist, while Whena Munn assisted on two goals as well. 

The scoring started early, with Russ getting to the IU goal just over three minutes into the game. It was Louisville's first shot of the season, and it found the back of the cage. Good start. The Cards and Hoosiers would finish the rest of the first quarter without any goals, as Louisville continued to pressure the goal but couldn't get anything else to show for it. Louisville's scoring difficulties were dismissed in the second quarter. The Cards scored their next three goals in the first 5:12 of the second quarter, scoring on all three shots in that time period.

Louisville was stifled for much of the second half. According to Coach Justine Sowry, IU adjusted the pace of play and Louisville was unable to react effectively to continue the relentless pressure from before. Flexibility to play styles in different situations is a portion of their game on which the Cards will need to work. Louisville did finally get a fifth goal late in the game, with Bethany Russ scoring her third with just under three minutes remaining in the game, a nice parallel to her first goal.

Despite the strong overall showing, one glaring question remains: who will be the primary goalie going forward? That question wasn't really answered yesterday. Hollyn Barr and Sam Minrath both played 30 minutes yesterday, with Barr taking the 1st half quarters and Minrath getting the 2nd. Both finished with one save, thus giving no one a positional advantage in the shutout. Coach Sowry has been clear that there is not yet a favorite for the position, and has backed that up by giving the two goalies different opportunities with their playing time. It may be notable that Barr has started in both this game and the scrimmage against Miami, but there may not be a lot there given the way that the playing time has otherwise been split. If they can effectively both play significant minutes and continue to not give up goals, maybe it doesn't even matter if there is a true starter.

The Cards will be back in action on Sunday at 12PM when they host UMASS at Trager Stadium. The two have met just twice previously, most recently in 2015. The Cards have won both games in the history of the matchup, but with such a long time between the games (12 years between games one and two and now four years since the last game), the historical matchup is probably not particularly indicative. The Cards will look to continue the strong offensive showing and clean up some of the missteps against the Hoosiers.

Volleyball Falters in Opener Against Florida

Once again, Louisville volleyball is opening the season with a very tough couple of matchups. Once again, they find themselves in a hole to start the season. In front of a sold out crowd at L&N Federal Credit Union Arena, the Cards stumbled their way through a season opening sweep. Louisville kept it fairly close in the second and third sets, ultimately losing both 21-25, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, neither of which describes the sport of volleyball. 

Louisville's issues from last night aren't hard to find when you open the box score. Louisville was outblocked 14-3 by Florida, and the Cards finished the night with a whopping .107 hitting percentage. While blocks do contribute to the final error number, committing 21 errors while finishing only 32 kills is not an ideal situation. Melanie McHenry led the team with 11 kills, while committing only 5 errors for a final percentage of .222. She was second on the team in hitting, behind Anna Stevenson who finished with a .286 on six kills. The freshman we're all looking for to have a big season as a hitter, Aiko Jones, had a night not worth writing home about, putting in 4 kills but adding 5 errors and finishing with a negative .071. Amaya Tillman was also negative with 2 errors on 8 attempts and no kills. She did contribute with the only solo block on the night and two block assists, however. 

Outside of hitting, Louisville was forced into positions they couldn't quite be fans of. Alexis Hamilton, as expected, led the team with 11 digs, though that number seems rather small. McHenry was forced into defensive action as well, with seven digs herself. The one that stands out as rather unfortunate is 11 total digs between Tori Dilfer and Shannon Shields. Defensive action by a setter is considered a loss on any possession. While it may not guarantee a loss of a point, it certainly puts you in a bad offensive position. Think trying to play an offensive possession in basketball but your point guard is off limits. 

In the setter battle, Dilfer appears to have a lead, as she started all three sets and saw the lion's share of the playing time. She finished with 19 of the Cards 29 assists on the night on 47 attempts. Shields finished with just 5 on 31 attempts, which is not quite as good. However, Shield was not likely playing with the 1s quite as often as Dilfer, giving her a bit of a pass in that particular category. I imagine that the setter battle will continue for at least a bit longer. If nothing else, Shields would be a more than serviceable backup to spell Dilfer for whatever reason. 

All in all, it was an unfortunate way to start the season, but we are talking about taking on a top-ten team in the country. It would have been nice to take a set, but it wasn't like Louisville was beaten by ten in each set of the sweep either. The Cards lost by an average of just over five points per set, which can easily be swung on any given day. Louisville will get a chance at redemption tonight when they take on Texas A&M at 7PM (or following the Florida/Dayton match, whichever comes later). Head on over to the Arena to root on the Cards.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

Well, we're in it now. Four games this week have us ready to bring the heat on the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour. The summer slump is officially over, and it's time to get back into the groove. Tune in as the stars align to allow the A-Team to get back together in the studio this week. The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour begins at 11AM on WCHQ. Find WCHQ at 100.9FM on local radio, the WCHQ App, at wchqfm.com, or watch along on Facebook Live.

Until next time, Go Cards!

-CH-

Louisville Women's Basketball, Volleyball as seen by Jared Anderson -- Paulie on Jurich v. Board WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

HOOPS ARE COMING! 

Two months until Christmas! That means women's basketball is that much sooner. For you Facebook-ers, the UofL women's basketball official Facebook site has started creating events for all of their games. Friend them up, there will be a lot of good stuff there in the months to come. 

If you haven't read Tuesday's post here yet, Paulie went into great detail about their annual luncheon from Monday. There are quite a few interviews to listen to, including the always interesting "takes" from Coach Jeff Walz. He has complete confidence in this team's ability and their chances to be successful. How do you define success for them. Tell us in the comments section.

Also listen to Paulie's zany chat with the lovable Sam Purcell. I want to see this proposed "best out of ten" free throw showdown. My money's on Purcell. 

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VOLLEY UP! 


Volleyball's Tess Clark and her magical ways of 1,000 kills take the "serve and block" Cards up to South Bend tonight for a midweek match against Notre Dame. No Touchdown Jesus involved in this contest but perhaps Ace Jesus will be sitting on the Cardinal bench. Anything to help clean up the service errors we saw when Dani Busboom Kelly's wide-netters visited the Sunshine State. 

The Fighting Irish enter the contest at 16-5 while barely clinging onto a conference record above .500 at 6-4. That ACC mark ties them with Duke for sixth place in the standings. Notre Dame has 224 blocks on the year, which could provide the Cards some trouble. In recent years tall teams that block well have been Louisville's Achilles heel, including last year's matchup. 

Each team defended their home turf well and the Cards were led by a stat sheet filled by Morgan Miller. Besides the 224 blocks, the Irish also have recorded 123 aces on the year. The Cards back row of Molly Sauer, Gabby Wiley and a hopefully healthy Alexis Hamilton (how about that tongue twister) that should be off concussion protocol should be able to hold down the fort just fine. 

Louisville has some nice numbers of their own, including Tess's thousand kills. Jasmine Bennett and Maggie DeJong have teamed up in the middle blocker position quite well, recording 40 and 41 blocks apiece. 

This past week the Cards (8-2 in conference) were listed as having the 36th. toughest schedule in DI -- which is something I fully concur with. Those darn Big 10 games from early in the season at least look good for this stat. Also, UofL received some votes in the latest polls, but have not reached a top 25 ranking yet. A win tonight and a win against ACC #1 ranked Pittsburgh on Friday could boost the Cards into the rarefied air of top 25. 

Notre Dame leads the all-time series 20-15 against UofL but tonight is a wonderful opportunity to close the gap an make the win streak against the blue and gold two games. A win would also give the Cards a two game win streak since they foiled  FSU in Tallahassee on Sunday. 

Both contests will be shown on the ACC Network Extra. 7:00 tonight. You might want to catch the Friday match at Cardinal Arena to cheer on these gals. 

Go Cards! 
Jared Anderson 

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WORDS AND MORE WORDS

(Some thoughts from Paulie on Star Wars XII: The Jurich Strikes Back) 

Put your hands in the air like you just don't care! 

Dr. Greg Postel's letter to Tom Jurich outlining the reasons for his firing and Jurich's response have been released because of the Freedom of Information mandates and neither appear to be happy campers. 

Postel alleges that Jurich promoted zero tolerance for infractions, failed to supervise head coaches, demonstrated ineffective management responsibilities and exhibited a lack of collegiality. 

Jurich, through his legal counsel, claims that Postel and the University's board are smearing his reputation and Jurich unequivocally denies the allegations and implications. 

This donnybrook is far from over. I can't wait to see if Jurich will write a book about his life and times at UofL. Hey, if Colin Kapernick can...why not T.J.???

Can we work Muffet McGraw into
the mix? 

So, the mudslinging, pie-in-the-face proceedings are underway. Grab some popcorn and have a seat Cardinal fans. This one could be a extra-innings affair. Forget that several UofL athletic teams are battling for conference titles and have key games ahead. The public wants blood and it looks like they're gonna get it. Claws out, kittens! 

Maybe we could add a few hookers, some bogus on-line classes, mad NFL stars charging from the sidelines to confront befuddled officials, Abbott and Costello's classic "Who's On First?" and some Led Zeppelin live to make this another nation-wide headline grabbing embarrassment for our dear and beloved alma mater UofL.  Go to your corners, boys and come out swinging when you hear the bell...this pi---ng contest is on, who's got the fuller bladder? 

 -Paulie

Football, Volleyball and More -- Sunday Cardinal Couple

Football

Let's start on an upbeat note, shall we?  At least mostly upbeat.  Football, in their season opener did knock off Purdue up at Lucas Oil Stadium by a score of 35-28.  This victory is diminished slightly by some bad ball security, and a shocking number of penalties.  As I saw someone say on Twitter this morning, an ugly win is better than a pretty loss, so we'll take it, learn from it, and move on.

Credit to Purdue for keeping it close and forcing the Cards to score the last 10 points of the night to win this one. And, once again, Lamar Jackson shows why he is the reigning Heisman trophy winner with a huge performance in Indy.

485 Total Yards for LJ8...which was over 100 more than the entire Purdue team managed. 

Volleyball

Kent State

Volleyball had two matches yesterday in The Cardinal Classic.  The first, in the early afternoon was
against Kent State.  KSU was clearly the outclassed team all weekend, but they were a fun team to watch, mostly because they scrambled a lot, and did a pretty good job of it.  With the result is that they kept all of the games surprisingly close in score, though I don't think they won a set all weekend.  The Cards won, in straight sets, 25-14, 25-17, 25-19.

A slight change to the starting lineup in this one, with Piper Roe starting in place of Maggie DeJong.  Unofficial word that I heard is that she pulled an abdominal muscle in warmups for the Kent State match, very minor, and she saw action again in the evening matchup.  Piper made the best of her opportunity, putting down 7 kills on 9 attempts, for an absolutely eye-popping .778.  Melanie McHenry and Tess Clark again formed the third leg of the offensive stool, both hitting .318.  Melanie got 8 kills on 22 attempts, and Tess got 10 on 22 attempts, just with two more hitting errors than McHenry (3 vs 1).  Megan Sloan made an appearance in this match, and also took advantage of her opportunity with 5 kills on 10 attempts in only 2 sets played.

Defense was mostly by committee, though Piper did contribute well in blocking as well, with a solo and four shares, nearly half of the team's total of 7.  Digs were pretty evenly distributed, with Wilma Rivera getting the most at 13 as opponents continue to target her to try to take her out of her setting duties.  The two dynamic duos in the back row, Molly Sauer, and Gabbie Wiley, along with Molly and freshman Alexis Hamilton accounted for a total of 18, (7 for Molly, 9 for Gabbie, and 6 for Alexis).  The 6'2" McHenry continues to show her versatility in all-rotation play by also picking up 6.

Overall a good outing, and then evening came.

Illinois

Illinois came in to form the marquee matchup of The Cardinal Classic.  An (honestly, surprising to me) unranked Illinois team came in and showed that, despite having a new coach (probably a big part of why they were unranked to start the season) they haven't dropped a beat.  The Cards were looking for revenge for the elimination from the NCAA tournament in 2015, also in Cardinal Arena, but it wasn't to be.  Illinois came away with the win, 25-18, 25-15, 25-20.

Full credit to Illinois, who is still a very fine team, that never gave up on a ball, and with size and power that the Cardinals just couldn't match.  While Louisville was getting a lot of deflections and tips at the net, they just didn't have the size and height to get solid blocks, with only three total for the match.

UofL struggled to remain in system, and just didn't play very sharp.  I have no doubt that the team will be looking at plenty of film from this one, to find their mistakes and ways to improve.  One of Coach Busboom Kelly's saying comes into play, here, "Win, or learn."  There will be lot's to learn from in this one.

The Wide Netters head back out on the road next, with a trip out west to Vegas, for the UNLV Challenge.  There, they'll meet up with UC Irvine, Weber State, and of course host UNLV.  From what I've seen of this Cards team, and despite knowing precious little about these opponents, I do expect UofL to come out of this weekend with three more in the win column.

Don't give up on this team.  They may be only 2-3 in their record at this point, but those three losses are to ranked teams and a team that should be ranked, and probably will be in tomorrow's poll.  Also, in that win column is a win over a ranked team.  I would stand up UofL's strength of schedule to this point against any team in the country.  There are good things ahead, here.

Field Hockey

Sowry's squad looks to get back to the winning ways today at noon, where they also take on the Kent State Golden Flashes.  Let's hope the Field Hockey squad has as much success against them as the Volleyball team did, and help set a pattern for the Football team to follow three weeks from now when they tangle with Kent State here in Louisville.

Field Hockey is on the road for this one, in Columbus OH.  They'll be coming out angry after taking the loss to Ohio State, Friday.  No video or audio of this one, that we're aware of.

The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

The latest episode of The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour is up on the soundcloud, and my snarkerator was a finely tuned machine yesterday.  We had audio from Dani Busboom Kelly after the volleyball win over WKU Friday, and had a wonderful live chat by phone with Cortnee Walton in our Catching Up series.  One takeaway from that, be sure to listen for her on the call a number of ACC Network Extra events this year.  Otherwise, we did touch, at least briefly, on all of the various sports competing...things get busy in the fall.  Check it out, won't you?

https://soundcloud.com/chradio/cardinal-couple-20170902

-- JMcA

Volleyball Shows Promise - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Two Losses, but Promise Still

Volleyball got their season underway as Case wrote about yesterday, and on the surface it looks like opening weekend was a disappointing one, with the season sitting at 0-2, now.  I see cause for excitement in this team, though.

Last night, the Cards finished off their part of the ACC/B1G challenge, and went down to defeat at the hands of #4 ranked Minnesota.  UofL did win a set in this one, and they showed signs of excellence in all four sets.  Minnesota was coming off a complete beatdown of UNC yesterday, and found the going a bit tougher with UofL, 20-25, 25-18, 25-18, 25-20.

Most of the usual suspects provided the Cardinals' offensive firepower, albeit aligned a little differently than we were used to seeing last year.  Melanie McHenry and Tess Clark privided the biggest outside firepower, with 14 and 17 kills each (.122, and .233).  Amanda Green also put down 9 from the outside, which would usually be cause for accolades as well, but with 9 errors to match, it's hard to be too enthusiastic about that.

Wilma Rivera, transferred in from Penn State did, as expected, take the setting duties for the full match, with 47 assists on 54 total kills for the team.  The Most Efficient award goes, as usual, to Jasmine Bennet, hitting .294, with 7 kills on 17 attempts.  Defense was by committee, with Molly Sauer clearly the chair of the committee.  She had 21 digs in the Libero role, while DSes Gabbie Wiley and Alexis Hamilton had 11 and 9.  Rivera showed her all around skills, and how much Minnesota was targeting her as setter, by getting 12 digs.

Subjectively, this team, to exceed expectations, needs to clean up the errors.  30 attacking errors is painful, and while some of these, as always, can be credited to the opposing team's blocking, but that's still high.  Similarly, 12 serving errors to 5 aces hurts a lot as well, and with serving errors, the team owns it all.

It's hard to draw too many conclusion when I didn't get to see, or even hear commentary, on this one, but to take a set off of the #4 team in the country gives hope.  Combine that with Friday's play against Wisconsin, despite it being a sweep, where UofL played competitively with them (well, after the first 10 minutes anyway), and they're the #7 team in the country, and there is reason to be excited about the potential of this team.

Last year was a year mostly defined by unforced errors, and we saw some of that this weekend, so let's hope they can get that cleaned up.  Otherwise, I think the weapons are there for this team to have a good year.  And yes, if they can clean up the errors, I think Jared's prediction of a top 25 appearance before the year is out is within reach.

I'm certainly excited for home opener vs WKU at 6:30 Friday night at Cardinal Arena.

Field Hockey Challenged Today

Sowry's stick squad faces a major challenge in this opening weekend with defending national champions Delaware, come to Trager for a noon start.  The Cards will be celebrating the birthday of Sherrill BrakeMeier, the matriarch of UofL Field Hockey during the game.  This is a real treat for those of us in the press box as she typically joins us in the chair closest to the door.  I have had the opportunity to chat with Brakemeier a couple of times, well, mostly gleefully listened, as she recounted tales of the very early days of UofL Field Hockey, playing on the Crawford Gym Field.  It's telling of the vintage of these stories that not even Crawford Gym exists anymore, let alone the field.

The Cards did start off their season Friday with a 4-1 win over IU which Case recounted in his article yesterday.  Expect a more challenging match today when the Blue Hens come calling.  We'll have the recap, and audio unless things really go haywire, for you in tomorrow's article.  Get the scoop by coming out to Trager Stadium for the noon start, the weather looks lovely, though you may need some sunscreen on this cloudless day.

Soccer vs Marquette

Women's Soccer continues the weekend of soccer (between them, the men, and Louisville City FC), with a match against Marquette with a 1pm kick at Lynn Stadium.  The team is undefeated so far, with a 3-0 start, which is helping Case feel confident in his 12-win season prediction.  If Field Hockey isn't your thing, Lynn is just down the street, but Soccer doesn't have water cannons like Field Hockey does.

I believe Case said he would be in attendance for this one, so look for his recap tomorrow, his knowledge of the game of soccer is far better than mine, so he should be able to give us more than just a statistical recap like I would probably do.

The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

I'm still not sure why they let us do it, but The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour made it usual appearance yesterday on Crescent Hill Radio.  You can catch the replay, where I admit to having gotten the volleyball ranking for Wisconsin wrong, at https://soundcloud.com/chradio/cardinal-couple-20170826.  There's a little less joking around and general jocularity, but the tradeoff is we get to talk about actual official sports results and play audio from Coach Walz and Asia Durr talking about their trip to Japan.

-- JMcA