Tennis Update, Our Condolences and Walz -- Tuesday Cardinal Couple

( JEFF MCADAMS DELIVERS THE TUESDAY EDITION OF CARDINAL COUPLE AND BRINGS US AN UPDATE ON MARK BECKHAM'S TENNIS TEAM AND THE SADNESS OF A TRAGEDY INVOLVING A WOMEN'S SPORTS SQUAD. )   

Tennis Results

The UofL Women's Tennis team spent the weekend in South Bend, IN at Notre Dame participating in the Notre Dame Invitational.  Results for this extremely young team were generally good.  The format of this event is not the same as a typical head-to-head competition between two teams.  Only four players competed for each team, compared with the typical 6 or 7, and each team competed in four singles matches and four doubles matches against opponents from various of the other five schools at the event.  A typical college tennis competition features three doubles matches and six singles matches.

The Cards showed steady improvement through the weekend across both singles and doubles matches each day.  Starting off with an average day on Friday...The Cards went 2-2 in both the singles matches and the doubles rounds.  Saturday saw an improvement to 3-1 in both singles and doubles.  Sunday didn't have any doubles competitions, but Mark Beckham's youngsters cleaned up the singles matches with an unblemished 4-0.

The other teams in the event were host Notre Dame, Akron, Illinois, Purdue, and Tulane

The Women's Tennis roster only has a single senior listed, Manuela Velasquez, with all of the rest of the players being freshmen and sophomores.  The four players that competed at Notre Dame were freshmen Ellie Gerlach and Aleksandra Mally, along with sophomores Olivia Boesing and the lone international player on the team, England's Elle Stokes.

Women's Tennis will continue their play in Indiana this coming weekend, October 3rd through 5th at Purdue in West Lafayette, IN.

North Central Texas College Softball

We mentioned, briefly, at the end of the Cardinal Couple Radio Show on Saturday the tragedy that occurred in southern Oklahoma to the North Central Texas College Softball team.  The team was returning from a scrimmage with Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma City when a semi truck crossed the median from northbound I-35 and impacted the driver's side of the passenger section of the NCTC team bus.  At air time, details were scarce, with the most important being that 4 people from the team bus had been killed.

The NTSB has a team in the area investigating, but the four dead have since been identified, and all were players on the team.  The four players were Meagan Richardson, Brooke Deckard, Katelynn Woodlee and Jaiden Pelton.  North Central Texas is a community college, so all of the team are freshmen and sophomores.  Of those killed, Katelynn Woodlee was a freshman, while the other three were sophomores.

There is no determination, as of yet, as to why the semi crossed the median into the oncoming lanes.

The thoughts of us here at The Cardinal Couple are with the families of these young women that were killed, as well as the rest of the NCTC community affected by this tragedy.

jmca

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EDITOR'S NOTE:

We get e-mails. A couple of days ago, they started rolling in about the possibility of Jeff Walz leaving Louisville to take the UT...or possibly some other job...

I think that Walz's tweet pretty well summed it up when he said he'd like to retire at UofL. In conversations with him...he always expresses a desire to make the program better each year. 

And, a million bucks a year can go a very long way in Louisville. 

Jeff Walz leaving Louisville? Yeah....to go recruit, ski, visit friends and family, coach USA squads,
watch his WNBA kids and attend away games. To take another job? The chances of that are just as likely as me being named his successor. Zero. I do expect him to get more involved in lawn care around 2025 or so. Maybe he'll let me operate the leaf blower. I got skills...

Paulie 

Volley Cards defeat N.D....Women's Soccer beats USF 2-1...Dream fall to Lynx...Velasquez wins singles in tennis.

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MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE:

-Lola, Brauneis key Cardinal Volleyball win

-Exeter's "heads up" leads Soccer Cards to 2-1 victory

-Atlanta, Angel fall in 4th quarter to Minnesota

-Freshman Velazquez wins singles final at Wake Forest

The University of Louisville Volleyball team defeated Notre Dame 3-1 in action at South Bend yesterday afternoon. After dropping the first game to the Irish 17-25...UofL roared back and took the final three games 25-16, 25-22 and 25-21 to secure the match. The win drops the Irish to 8-6, 1-3 and the Cards improve to 12-4, 4-0.

Stepping up big again for Louisville was Lola Arslanbekova. The junior outside hitter had 28 kills against Notre Dame and was especially dominant in game three for the Cards...scoring six out of the last seven points to get the win.

Lola likes it! Cards win!

It was a slow start to Sunday action for Anne Kordes' team, falling behind 12-3 to the Irish in game one. Louisville managed to get within six late in the contest at 21-15 but ended up on the short end of the 17-25 final.

The Cards got Lola involved early in the second game and used a 11-3 run midway through the action to build a comfortable lead that the Irish couldn't diminish. Lola's seven kills and Emily Juhl's three blocked helped the Cards to a 25-16 win and knotted the match at 1-1. 

Game three was a nip and tuck affair....Louisville falling behind 13-10 but getting three straight scores from Emily Juhl to create a 16-16 tie. Notre Dame fought back to grab a 19-17 lead but Lola took over from there and Louisville pounded out a hard fought 25-22 victory.

The Cards jumped on the Irish early in the final game and led 17-10 before a furious Notre Dame got them within two at 21-19. Emily Juhl got the winner for Louisville with a kill at 24-21
to end Sunday's action.

The Cards got an eye-popping 56 assists from Taylor Brauneis in the match.

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Christine Exeter used her head yesterday. Literally. Her head shot, on a kick from Devyn Ciotti, found the net in overtime and Louisville won 2-1 over the Bulls. With the win, the Cards improve to 5-5-3 and 3-1-2 in BIG EAST play.

USF started the day's scoring early...connecting on a goal just five minutes into action. It took the Cards just two minutes to tie it, though. Angelika Uremovich chased down a block by the USF goalkeeper and sent it back toward the net successfully. After that, the game evolved into a defensive struggle until Exeter's heroics in overtime. The Cards out shot the Bulls 24-12 overall and had a decisive 15-6 advantage on shots on goal. Chloe Kiefer finished with five saves at goalkeeper for UofL. 

The Cards pack the bags and head out for two BIG EAST game next...Villanova is the first stop on Friday and Georgetown on Sunday.


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The Atlanta Dream fell to the Minnesota Lynx 88-74 in the first game of the WNBA Finals...despite 33 points from Angel McCoughtry. Despite being shackled with foul trouble in the first half, #35 came out and scored nineteen of her points in the third quarter. The Lynx came out on fire in the fourth quarter and, with hot shooting and some crucial Atlanta turnovers, went on a 13-0 run which put them ahead to stay.

The Dream dominated early in the game, leading by double digits several times in the second quarter. Lindsey Harding and Iziane Castro Marquez picked up the scoring slack for the foul plagued Angel and strong rebounding by Alison Bales pushed Atlanta to a 29-17 advantage.

Led by Rebekkah Brunson and Semoine Augustus, the Lynx fought back and rode a third quarter surge that saw them grab a 51-49 lead. The contest was tied 62-62 after three.

In the end, Minnesota's rebound advantage 40-28, scoring domination in the paint (52-30) and 11 blocked shots overcame the Dream's quickness. Without post player Erika DeSouza, Atlanta was over-matched and out-played in the paint. DeSouza led Brazil's national team to a Olympics qualifying berth over the weekend but is expected to suit up for Atlanta in game two on Wednesday.

McCoughtry was spectacular in defeat. She dominated the third quarter with an assortment of jumpers, spin moves, steals and blocks. The Target Center crowd of over 15,000, though, rallied the home team and the Lynx takes the early lead in the series.

"The crowd energizes them and it just weighs you down." McCoughtry commented after the game. "It's good to know that we were the ones that kind of messed ourselves up. That's a good thing for us because we can adjust that."

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The Louisville women's tennis team may have found the star of the future yesterday in freshman Manuela Velasquez. She won the B - Singles yesterday in the Wake Forest Invitational and teamed up with Amelia Harris to win the doubles also.

Velasquez, a Queens, NY resident, is a great story. Her parents chose home schooling for her for high school because her early participation in tournaments was hurting her grades. Although she missed high school activities like proms and a formal graduation, she says it didn't affect her socially and feels it helped her academically. 

Velasquez has overcome obstacles to become a Cardinal



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"It wasn't hard to keep up. It was just staying disciplined and completing the work."

She's also overcome two serious injuries to reach the college level. A torn ACL in 2008 and two torn ligaments in her shoulder in 2010 kept her off the mainstream college recruiting circuits. Mark Beckham, UofL's head women's coach, saw the potential there, though and successfully got her on the Cardinal campus...beating out Long Island University and Boston College for her services.