ACC FIELD HOCKEY TOURNAMENT -- WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 

ACC FIELD HOCKEY TOURNAMENT UNDERWAY

Although Louisville did not qualify for the ACC Field Hockey Tournament, we will be watching with some interest in the results here at Cardinal Couple.. The Tournament is being held in Winston-Salem, at the Wake Forest Field  (Gentner Stadium). 

The home team, Wake Forest played the third game out of four gmes on Tuesday, and...as a #7 seed, was a prohibitive underdog to #2 Duke, coached by former UofL Field Hockey Coach Pam Bustin. And, the Blue Devils won this "satanic" match-up over the homestanding Demon Deacons 4-1

Earlier in the day, #1 UNC opened the tournament and had no problems in diposing the #8 seed squad from California (that beat out Louisville for the #8 seed). The Golden Bears got stuck in the TarHeels trap and fell 5-0. That one was a 10 a.m. start. Who knows, but maybe the Cards were lucky not to get in the tournament. UNC is playing with their hair on fire lately. 

Next up was #4 Virginia vs #5 Syracuse, and we got maybe a slight upset in this one, with the Orange downng the Cavailiers 1-0. So, it'll be #5 Syracuse facing #1 UNC Wednesday at 1 p.m. Boston College gets Duke after the opener. 

The day's activities ended with #3 Boston College facing #6 seed Stanford. The Eagles beat the Cardinal 3-2. 

So, the #1, #2, #3 and #5 seeds advance to the semifinals today. ACC Network is showing all the contests, in case you want to get away from election results, and they begin at 1 p.m when North Carolina goes up against Syracuse. 

My pick? I loved the job that Duke's Pam Bustin did when she was Louisville's head field hockey coach and have been a fan of her ever since. I'd like to see her knock off B.C. and UNC. They also have former Louisvllle star, Charlie van Oirschot, who transferred there as a junior and is now a graduate student. In this rare case, I will say, "Go Duke..." 

 A lot of good Field Hockey players come from the state of Pennsylvania, so...why doesn't Pitt play Field Hockey?  Mystifying,isn't it? Penn State, Penn and Villanova do.  

paulie

Trio of Cardinal wins on Sunday -- MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

FIELD HOCKEY DOWNS CALIFORNIA IN OVERTIME 2-1


Starting off the Louisville women's sports double-header on Sunday, the #11 Field Hockey squad got an overtime goal from standout sophomore Mercedes "Meche" Pastor to knock off un-ranked California 2-1 at Trager Field.  

A contest where defense was the priority for most of the contest. The visiting Golden Bears struck first with just 4:36 left in the first half due to a Cardinal miscue and jailbreak type attack that caught Louisville's defense a bit unaware. The Cards were taking a penalty corner...but the insert of the ball skipped past the Cardinal attack formation and rolled to midfield. The Bears had the numbers and rapidly advanced the ball to the net, where they got and unassisted goal. 1-0 at the half. 

Louisville head coach Justine Sowry outlined to The Flock at halftime what she wanted to see out of them in the second half and the theme was "playing to your strengths". That came to fruition at the 54:36 mark when junior Whena Munn (pronounced "Thena") took a pass from Pastor and the New Zealand native fired from in front of the California cage to find net. Louisville and Cal would both have opportunities to win this one in regulation...but the defenses held and it was still 1-1 at the end of regulation. 


The sudden death scenario in Field Hockey consists of lowering the on-field -participants to just seven players per side. They then go to work and first score wins. 

Louisville received a penalty corner opportunity four and one half minutes into the extra session and Pastor, who hails from Buenos Aires, Argentina, rifled a shot past Cal goal-keeper Danielle Mentink for the game-ender. 

The Cards go to 4-2 on the season and are 1-1 now in extra-time hockey. They bring in Boston College Friday night to Trager Stadium next.


We caught up with Coach Sowry and Meche Pastor after the contest and got their reactions. For some reason, the UofL link to post game Sowry video takes you to her discussing the loss to UNC Friday...so we didn't include it here. Interns running amuck in the post-game processing, I suppose. The audio I did is below: 


LINK: COACH SOWRY POST GAME

I've included both interviews with Pastor here...the UofL video of it, which was a bit abridged and my full uncut audio interview: 

LINK: POST GAME MECHE PASTOR VIDEO INTERVIEW

LINK: MECHE PASTOR POST GAME AUDIO


WSOC RUNS PAST EKU 5-1

Moving to Sunday evening, Louisville women's soccer scored early and often in a dominating 5-1 win over the visiting Colonels from Richmond. 

Four different scorers for the Cards in the victory. Brooklynn Rivers got the onslaught started when she took a pass from Arianna Ferraro in front of the goal 17 minutes into action and booted it in for the first score of the contest. The Kickin' Cards added to the total six minutes later when Mollie Rouse took a cross from Emina Ekic in front of the EKU keeper and sent it into the net to make it 2-0 UofL.

Delaney Snyder picked up her third goal of the season when she followed up on a rebound and drove it into the back of the net just two minutes before the end of the first half. The teams took to the locker rooms with Louisville comfortably ahead 3-0.

Louisville was not done with the fireworks, however and San Diego freshman Maisie Whitsett took over. She found success just two minutes into the second session, taking a nice feed from fellow freshman Anna Henderson (Kirkland, WA) and drove it past the EKU keeper Zoe Aguirre into the net to make it 4-0 University of Louisville. 

Eastern Kentucky got their lone goal when they took a dribble and Idalys Rea pushed one past Gabby Kouzelos to draw them within three at 4-1...six minutes into the final half. 

Just two minutes after that, it was Whitsett time again. The Cards got a rebound in front of the net and Brooklynn Rivers got the ball to Whitsett who tapped it in for the final score of the night. 

Louisville went deep into the roster as time continued in the second half. Eight reserves saw action, including junior Sarah Feola, back from injury and appearing for the first time this season on the field. The Quebec, Canada midfielders entrance and exit after 25 minutes was met with enthusiastic response from the Cardinal players. 

Domination in the stats for the Cards in this one. They took a total of 21 shots, 13 on goal, compared to just four for EKU....three of those on goal. 

The #24 Cards go to 6-1 for the season on a cloudy, foggy and drizzly night for soccer. Next up,  a road trip to Pittsburgh to open ACC play against the Panthers on Saturday night. 

We were able to get comments and remarks from Louisville head coach Karen Ferguson Dayes back in the soccer complex interview room after the impressive Louisville win...plus Maisie's first interview ever post-game as a Cardinal. She handled it quite well...as you'll hear. Once again, I'm including the UofL official video of these and my audio. 

JARED ANDERSON VIDEO OF COACH KAREN FERGISON DAYES POST GAME EKU

KAREN FERGUSON DAYES POST GAME EKU VIDEO

PAULIE AUDIO OF KAREN FERGUSON DAYES POST GAME EKU COMMENTS

MAISIE WHITSETT POST GAME REMARKS AFTER EKU GAME

PAULIE AUDIO FROM MAISIE WHITSETT INTERVIEW AFTER EKU GAME



MEN'S SOCCER UPSETS DUKE 3-0


While Field Hockey was toiling against Cal on the middle section of Floyd Street, Louisville men's soccer was engaged in battle with #2 Duke on the southern part of Floyd Street in Lynn Stadium. The men's squad found the flow in the second half with three goals and upset the Blue Devils 3-0 on Sunday afternoon. 

Scores from three different Cardinals gave Louisville this win. We'll let head men's soccer coach Ken Lolla describe the victory for you in the UofL post game video link: 

KEN LOLLA POST-GAME DUKE

( A special "Good Job!" to JARED ANDERSON, who took photos at all three events today after a long night of covering Cardinal Football Saturday night! We feature his photos today).

paulie
xxxxx

A Busy Friday - Friday Cardinal Couple

A busy weekend ahead for the various fall sports teams at UofL.

Let's get started with...

Field Hockey

Field Hockey swings out west for a noon local time start with the Cal Bears, which makes a 3pm start EDT.

The Bears are 1-1 on the season, with the best comparison probably being the 5-1 loss they took to Duke.

Duke, being an ACC team, is almost certainly quite a good team, so it's not surprising that they beat Cal, but the 5-1 gives us an idea of how much.

My takeaway is that, if we play well, we should come away with a good solid win.

This UofL team is still coming together, but I think they have the chops at this point to be able to get the win over Cal.  We're not aware of any sort of live stream available for this game, but we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for any posted and will tweet the URL for them.

Soccer

The soccer team gets the annual matchup with Kentucky started tomorrow at 7:30 down in Lexington.

This is a quite good Kentucky soccer team.

They're not ranked, but they have beaten the then-ranked Washington Huskies in a 1-0 match to start the season.  A bit of a head-scratcher, though, they promptly lost a 2-0 game against South Dakota State. Beyond that, they beat a couple of less competitive teams in UNC Greensboro, and Toledo. They hung three on UNC Greensboro, and a whooping seven on Toledo. These two games, along with the super competitive Washington matchup were clean sheets for the Wildcats.

The Cards will be looking to play competitively with a team that is playing a very high level of soccer.

Volleyball

Volleyball has their first home match tomorrow night at 7pm downtown at the KFC Yum! Center.

Starting the home slate with Minnesota worries me quite a bit as they are still looking for their first victory of the season. They have taken two losses in the young season, to Texas A&M and to Stanford. Now, to be fair, those are both excellent volleyball teams with Texas A&M knocking on the door of the Top 25, and Stanford ranked second behind perennial powerhouse Penn State. The Golden Gophers have several offensive weapons in Sarah Wilhite, Daly Santana, and Paige Tapp. They also have at least two setters who can give them solid play in Samantha Seliger-Swenson, and Katie Schau.

I don't know Minnesota volleyball specifically very well, but the Big Ten volleyball tends to be big, slow, and powerful. This will contrast with UofL's small, and quick play, so look for considerable differences in playing style. If you watched any of the live stream last week against Illinois, you may have noticed a similar contrast in playing styles.

Volleyball will continue the ACC/Big Ten challenge Saturday night against a strong Wisconsin team who also has a surprising loss on their record book when they tangled with Western Kentucky on The Badgers home floor. Some of the sting from that loss may have dulled with victories the next day over Colgate, and College of Charleston.

Wisconsin is currently ranked 13th in the nation.

JMcA