Cal Bears next for Louisville WBB -- Sunday Cardinal Couple

Gray, Boyd could pose problems for Cards

The University Of Louisville women's basketball team faces their third top 25 opponent of the season with a 5 p.m. EST tip today against California in the Haas Pavilion on campus.


Louisville (10-1) and Cal (7-2) have met once before...the winner advancing to the 2013 NCAA Championship game. The Cards took a 64-57 win over the Golden Bears in New Orleans Arena after trailing by 10 at halftime. This one was tied with 1:51 remaining after Layshia Clarendon dropped a three on Louisville....but Louisville outscored UC 7-0 the rest of the way to advance.

Of particular concern for the Cards today will be the tandem of seniors Brittany Boyd and Reshanda Gray. Boyd, a 5'9" point guard,  leads the NCAA with 8.9 assists per contest and averages 14.1 ppg and 8.1 rebounds. She and Gray are also on the John L. Wooden Award Women's Preseason Top 30, the WBCA's Wade Watch List and the Naismith Top 50 Watch List. 

Gray brings 19.2 ppg to the stat sheets per contest and is

the Bears leading scorer. She dropped 37 on Sacramento State earlier this month. The 6'3" forward goes to the boards with abandon and will be a matchup problem for the Cards. 

Gabby Green, a former Louisville recruiting target, has stepped in as a freshman and seen considerable playing time for Lindsay Gottlieb.

It's a homecoming for Mariya Moore...who played her high school ball in the shadow of the Berkeley campus and Arica Carter is also a California native from San Diego. Both freshman will be heavily involved in trying to curtail the strong UC guard contingent. 

Cal has dropped their last two outings...and Lindsey Gottlieb has never lost three in a row during her tenure on the Berkeley campus. Cal hasn't defeated a ranked opponent yet this season. 

The Cards will need to play a much better game than their

last outing against GCU. Free throws must improve and shots attempted in the paint must fall...especially those second chance opportunities. We're hoping the GCU contest served as a wake up call to Walz's charges...all expectations are that there will be a large pro-Cal crowd in attendance today because of the many promotions Cal Marketing has attached to this afternoon's tilt. 

We'll have the recap later tonight. This one is scheduled to be live on the Pac-12 Networks and Cards Radio 790 WKRD with Matt Andrews and AJ will have the call on the radio. If you are a Time Warner subscriber...the Pac 12 Network can be found at 530

This one promises to be a tight battle and could evolve into a track meet...given both teams' propensity for putting points on the scoreboard. For Louisville to take the "W"...it'll require the Cards best effort of the season so far. 

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Speaking of effort, we encourage you to give it that old

college try and listen to our latest broadcast of the CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO HOUR. It's archived on Crescent Hill's Soundcloud and available now. Paulie and Worldwide Jeff talk hoops past and present and Jeff plummets into the Grand Canyon with his woeful performance on THE WORLDWIDE QUIZ. 

Don Paulie stops in to spread a little Christmas cheer and Coach Walz delivers another lesson to Paulie...this time about the irrelevance of social media and ambiguity of statistics. Plus...you get three minutes of pre-show bonus audio (unknown to us) where we discuss height, the WCC and Argentina.   Linkie below:

CARDINAL COUPLE RADIO DEC.20TH BROADCAST

Tuesday Cardinal Couple

 

TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 

-Team Defend will represent USA in FIBA U18 3x3

 

 

Kortney Dunbar

Kortney Dunbar's (Edwardsville, IL) team came in 3rd. On her team was Dejanae Boykin ...who we featured at Cardinal Couple a few days ago

 

Also, on this team is Gabby Green ( who has Louisville in her top 8) and Katie Lou Samuelson , the 3rd and final Samuelson ( her 2 sisters play for Stanford) although she has expressed interest in Louisville.

 

There's no question that 3x3 basketball is different.

First, obviously, there are only three players on the court, and second, that trio is playing halfcourt basketball. But on top of that, the USA representatives aren't selected from a large group -- instead, teams of four play a tournament, and the winning team represents the United States.

The four players, 18 and under, who will be at the FIBA U18 3x3 World Championship Sept. 26-29 in Jakarta, Indonesia are Notre Dame commit Brianna Turner (Houston, Texas/Manvel High School), Gabby Green (Oakland, Calif./St. Mary's High School), Katie Lou Samuelson (Huntington Beach, Calif./Mater Dei High School) and Arike Ogunbowale (Milwaukee/Divine Savior Holy Angels). They called themselves Team Defend and won all seven games they played, including a 21-10 win over the young St. Louis quartet of Alecia Sutton, Cierra Porter, Sophie Cunningham and Napheese Collier in the finals.

Team Defend will return to Colorado Springs Sept. 21-24 to get ready to defend the 3x3 World Championship.

To earn that honor, Team Defend went a perfect 7-0 in tournament play at the USA Basketball women's U18 3x3 National Championship in Colorado Springs, Colo., defeating Team Primus 21-10 in the championship game.

“It feels really good to win this, because last year we didn’t have to play anyone to get to the 3x3 U18 Worlds,” said three-time USA Basketball gold medalist Turner, who is ranked No. 1 in the 2014 Full Court Fresh 50. “But this year we actually went through the whole tournament process, you get to get a look at teams and play against teams. The team we beat in the championship game, we lost to them before (in a 3x3 pre-tournament), so there was even more pressure for us to beat them."
Team Primus was the youngest team in the tournament, with three 16 year olds and 14-year-old Sutton. The young squad went undefeated in tournament play until they met Team Defend in the championship game.

In addition, Suttion won the ball handling skills challenge, while recent Georgia Tech commit Zaire

Gabby Green

O'Neil (Selden, N.Y.) and Arella Guiranthes (Westbury, N.Y.) also claimed individual titles.
Ogunbowale, who in June helped the USA capture their third consecutive gold medal at the FIBA Americas U16 Championship, was the tournament MVP. All four members of Team Defend, in fact, have won gold medals with USA Basketball, and all will be juniors or seniors in high school this year.

The third annual FIBA 3x3 U18 World Championship, which was billed as the 2011 FIBA 3x3 Youth World Championship in its inaugural year, is expected to feature 24 women’s teams and 32 men’s teams and the top teams will qualify for the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China.


In addition to the men’s and women’s tournament, the 3x3 U18 World Championship program for the weekend will also include skills contests and a mixed-team tournament with two males and two females competing on one team for their country.

(Thanks to fullcourt.com for the article idea...)

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Julia Fellerhoff

Going into the third day of the 2013 ITA National Collegiate Summer Championships, being hosted by Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., U of L singles players Julia Fellerhoff and Rebecca Shine have both advanced to the quarterfinals.


Fellerhoff, a seeded player in the draw, beat Kaysie Hermsdorn of Abilene Christian 6-3, 6-0 before taking down Oklahoma State's Karyn Guttermsen 7-6, 7-5. Fellerhoff then beat ACC power Miami's Clementia Riobuena 7-6, 7-5 to earn a shot at Florida's Alex Cercone.


Fellow senior Rebecca Shine, who was also seeded, beat Pitt's Taylor Washington 6-1, 6-4 before felling Iowa's Katie Zordani 4-6, 6-2, 1-0. Her win over Miami's Kelsey Laurente with another tiebreaker (7-5, 2-6, 1-0) sets her up to meet Alex Chatt, a nationally ranked high school player.The two paired up as doubles partners and beat Pascarella and Youel of Northern Iowa 8-1. Next to fall was Indiana's Rubenstein and Fujimoto 8-1. This makes for a matchup with top-seeded Auburn's pair of Kaster and Pfeifler.

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It's July, that means basketball!

CARDINAL COUPLE WEDNESDAY

- Hoops heating up in July

( Jenny O'Bryan fills us in on her latest observations on women's basketball recruiting news. It looks like UofL has a lot of top-flight talent mentioning the Lady Cards and it also looks like Jenny is going to be busy keeping track of all this talent!)


July marks the summer NCAA Certified Evaluation Period where AAU basketball teams head all over the country to play in front of coaches.  You can expect the U of L Women’s Basketball staff will be out in full force over the course of the next month trying to reel in some top talent to join the team in 2014. 

We all know by now two recruits have already verballed to Louisville, Sydney Brackmyre and Ariana Freeman.  I expect they will take their official visit to Louisville in the fall and are likely to sign during the early signing period this Fall.
 

We all also know that Syd has been recovering from an ACL tear and is getting stronger every day.  Paul and I had the opportunity to see her at the first Elite Skills Camp. 

A great article surfaced last week about Freeman.  Wow, what a workhorse, and what incredible dedication this young woman is showing to the game preparing herself for being a future Cardinal.  If you are not excited about seeing this young woman as a Cardinal, you will be after you read this article. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/recruiting-insider/wp/2013/06/26/summer-workouts-heat-up-for-paul-vis-ariana-freeman/

Just who will be joining this already talented duo in 2014?   The two evaluation periods in July are July 6-12 and July 23-29.  Below is a little of information about a few kids I have seen linked to Louisville.

Two west coast kids who play AAU ball on the same team are Mariya Moore and Natalie Romeo, a wing and guard, respectively.  Their names have been linked to Louisville basketball for months now.  

A 3^rd incredible talent from California is Gabby Green.   Green will miss the summer circuit of AAU ball as she made the USA U19 World Championship team.  If Walz and Company want to see Green play in July, they will have to go to Lithuania.  She is a fierce talent.  Check out this clip:
 

GABBY GREEN

Vivans is a scoring machine!

We have already mentioned Jatarie White ( 6-4 center ) out of S. Carolina was on campus recently as well as Victoria Vivians  ( 6 foot wing) out of Mississippi who has Louisville in her short list of 4. 

Another recruit who was on campus just this past weekend who will also be in the sights of the staff this month is Mackenzie Engram.   Engram is a 6-1 forward out of Georgia.  Her list of schools is SEC heavy with Georgia Tech, Georgia, LSU, Mississippi and Auburn.  I wonder what the Coach Purcell effect will be here?  Makes one wonder, does it not?

The final recruit on my radar, not necessarily Louisville’s radar, is Kortney Dunbar out of Edwardsville, Il.  Does that sound familiar?  It should, Dunbar was a teammate of incoming freshman Emmonie Henderson.  This 6-2 guard is a solid shooter, and certainly does not hurt to have that kind of size on the perimeter. 

It certainly looks like the staff is zeroing in on some top talent.  

I’ll be following their progress over the evaluation period and hope to recap how they have done at the end of the month. 

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Unless you have been away for a week and unplugged from technology, you have likely heard that U of L Women’s Basketball has been nominated for an ESPY Award for the biggest upset in sports.  If you have not voted, please do so.  Coach Pitino is also up for Coach of the Year and Angel McCoughtry is up for WNBA Player of the Year. 

Go visit the page and vote.  Let’s keep this Year of the Cardinal thing going!
 

Voting ends July 17 at 9:00 p.m. 

LINK BELOW
 

http://espn.go.com/espys/2013/

-Jenny O'Bryan

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