Cards WBB flies past Skyhawks 86-64 -- Wednesday Cardinal Couple

 NYLA HARRIS WITH 16 TO LEAD CARDS TO WIN 

The Louisville Cardinals WBB squad started sharp and easily rolled to a 22-point win over OVC member UTM Tuesday night in Martin, TN. Several Cards joined Harris, who shot 6 for 8 from the floor,  in double figures. Olivia Cochran put in 14 points, Taj Roberts contributed 13, and Imari Berry ended up with 10 points. 

The Cards were never seriously challenged in the one, except at the very beginning of the contest , when UTM took a 3-2 lead. Louiville rallied, though, to go up 10-5 and closed the quarter on a 12-2 run, for a commanding 25-11 first quarter advantage. 

As good  as that first quarter was, UofL did even better over the next ten minutes. The Cards couldn't miss from the floor and UTM couldn't by a bucket against the Louisville stiff defense. Jeff Walz's squad had a 44-18 lead  over the home squad with 90 second left in the half after a Harris layup and went into the halftime break with a 44-20 lead. UTM shot less tha 20% from the floor in the first half....Louisville was 14 for 30, just under 50%.

UTM did show some signs of life to begin the third quarter,and actually scored mpre points (21) in those ten minutes than they did in the entire first half. Louisville led 50-29 halfway thru the third quarter and pushed their lead to 67-41 with a spectacular three-pointer from Roberts with just three seconds left in the quarter. 

The Cards were substiuting pretty liberally in the final tem minutes, and it showed, as UTM outscored UofL 23-19 in the fourth quarter. The Cards were still up by 29 with 5:15 to play, at 79-50, and eventualy played 13 players in the contest...Anaya Hardy scored the Cards last basket with 1:37 left in the game, and Louisville ended up winning by 22 points. 

The Cards won the point-in the-paint battle 52-18, but did commit 21 turnovers. 

THE FRED REPORT 

(The late Freddy Mercury singing  "Another One Bites The Dust" 

                              

Free Throws -- The Cards couldn't quite get to the 70% we like to see them acheive, going 20-29 for 69% Olivia Cochran went 5-6, and Merissah Russell and Harris were 4-4. NO LETTER. 

Rebounds -- 46 grabs for the Cards, with Imari Berry leading the way. with nine  That easiy outshone the 33 grabbed by UTM.  We'll  award a CAPITAL "R" for cleaning the glass better than the home squad. UTM shooting 29% no doubt helped the Cards maintain a board superiority. 

Effort/Execution -- You gotta like the nineteen assists on 31 made baskets, and the 57.4% shooting % for UofL get a big "thumbs up", too. 19 second chance points is impressive as well, compared to UTM's 11. 21 turnovers though is an eyebrow raiser, especially when UTM had just 13. We'll award a small case "e", considering no Card played more than 22 minutes, and had a lot of combinations out there on an away court, early in the season. 

Defense -- For the first half, Louisville played shut down defense on UTM, allowing a mere 20 points and less than 20% shooting. They then allowed 21 pointw in the third quarter and 23 in the fourth...sure, they were playing a lot of combinations...and no one ever got in serious foul trouble, so it was a tale of two halves. Cp=onsequently, I'll award a small case "d". 

FINAL FRED TALLY:   -_R-e-d

 The Cards head to Lexington next for the annual tussle with UK. I'm anxious to see what the revamped Memorial Coliseum looks like Saturday. Jared, Sonya and I will be there to cover it.

pauiie 

Cards ground SkyHawks 85-67 -- MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 EVANS ERUPTS FOR 26 IN CARDS WIN 

The thing about Dana Evans is that she'll sneak up on you and put you away out of nowhere. 

To quote post-game Dana:

"If shots aren't falling for us, I gotta find a way to get to the bucket....doing something to get this team going. Like I always say, we're young, we're talented but I still have to be that leader." 

She led admirably on Sunday. 

After a first quarter where neither team seemed very adept at scoring -- ostensibly because of the defense each squad was playing -- Louisville clung to a 15-14 lead and the UT Martin SkyHawks had succeeded in slowing down the Cardinal Cannonball and was making a game of it. Dana and the Cards were not exactly looking like a top five team in the nation and had produced a less-than-satisfying 4-19  shooting effort (21%) in the first 10 minutes. Against a squad who was playing their first game of the year and been practicing sparingly with just 10 players. 

Cards fans were waiting for the explosion. waiting for Dana leadership to emerge, and it finally came with about seven minutes until half time. Dana nails a three to give the Cards a 25-24 lead, A minute later she puts in two free throws to increase that lead to three. Ready for the run, it's Elizabeth Balogun playing heady "D" with the steal and layup. After a UTM miss, Louisville is off and running and it's Dana with the layup. Good bye SkyHawks lead and hello Louisville seven point edge at 31-24.

The Cards were not done with the second quarter surge. Norika Konno, Liz Dixon, Dana again and Hailey Van Lith all added points in the impressive UofL half ending, 18-3 run that vaulted the Cards into a 40-27 halftime lead, And Dana? 16 points on two threes, 4-5 on free throws in 20 minutes -- playing the entire first half with a combination of 10 other Cardinals. 

The Cards would go on to win the third and fourth quarter but give a lot of credit to the SkyHawks for making Louisville earn the buckets.  An Evans 10-0 run on the foe, starting with a steal for a layup, followed by two threes in a two minute stretch early in the third quarter and then another successful Evans jumper may have been the killing blow for UTM. It put them behind 49-33 and they would get within 12 a couple of times, but Kianna Smith's three with 6:14 to go (off a nice pass from Mykasa Robinson, put Louisville up 74-54 and UTM could not recover. 

This is a UTM team that will be a solid one, maybe the front-runner in the OVC. Former Cardinal Seygan Robins drew the start for them and seemed quite comfortable helping direct the offense. Last year's OVC Player of the Year Chelsey Perry looks like she'll be a thorn-in-the-side of future opponents again -- she poured in 26 points against the Cards and helped lead UTM to a not-so-bad 21-51 (41.2%) shooting percentage. 

Louisville is going to play a lot of people in games this year it appears and you never know just who is going to step up and take the lead with Dana. Van Lith overcame a rough shooting afternoon by getting to the line and sinking six of her seven free throws.  Konno is playing some very great ball for the Cards right now -- and the combination of Dixon and Olivia Cochran inside produced 14 points, 12 rebounds and helped give Louisville a 43-35 rebounding edge. 

I like this "pick a Card, any Card" attack this year. Louisville is solid from starter to sub and can go 12 deep on opponents. That is a huge advantage when your reserve play/quality isn't a drop off. It doesn't give the opponent any breaks. Double team Dana and Kianna, and Norika or Olivia will make you pay. Zone the Cards? Good luck...the outside shooting will make you regret that and Liz and "E" will be there to gather any misses and put points on the board. Consider that Walz played  10 players ten minutes or more.  And this wasn't a blowout. Confidence in depth, ability and performance is a beautiful thing.

UTM had a mere two second chance points and no fast break points or points-off-turnovers. That's a huge stat, and it adds credence to the phrase -- "strength in numbers". when you look at the Cards. 

THE FRED REPORT

"Lamont...can we order about 2 or 3 more Dana's?"
 

FREE THROWS -- The Cards were 20-29 from the charity stripe in a game where there were too many whistles, in my opinion. That's 68.9% and falls just  short of our standard of 70% for a letter. Evans, Van Lith and Konno, though, were 12-14 and that's impressive. No letter here, though...

REBOUNDING -- The Cards won this stat 43-35 and kudos to Cochran and Dixon who had 17 of them. What's really impressive is that Louisville had 12 offensive rebounds and UTM just three. Hailey grabbed seven. We proudly assign a CAPITAL "R" here, for grabbing missed shots. 

EFFORT/EXECUTION -- Despite the slow start, Louisville was pretty careful in ball control with just nine turnovers. 12 assists on 29 baskets could be a little better, but they had a dominating 40 to 24 points-in-the-paint edge and shot over 50% in the middle two quarters. I'll offer the CAPITAL "E" for this category. 

DEFENSE --  The defense looked good with nine steals and forcing 19 turnovers but UTM shot 41.2% from the floor and Perry was pretty unstoppable for the SkyHawks. 26 Cardinal fouls is way higher than I like, but I attribute most of that to a crew that was calling even breathing hard on a player. I'll award a small case "d" for the defense.  

FINALL FRED TALLY:  _-R-E-d

So, 4-0 now and the SBB squad is averaging 94 points a contest. Jeff Walz has scorers, no doubt, and depth. With the pre-conference slate (maybe) behind the Cards now, they'' turn their attention to a trip to Durham to face a Duke squad that is 3-0 under new head coach Kara Lawson.

A silent Cameron Indoor Stadium will be weird, but the Blue Devils will try and make a little noise with six players averaging double-figure scoring. Wins over ECU, WCU and Longwood, by an average of 27 points is an impressive start for a team under a freshman head coach. 

This one takes place on Wednesday night and the 7 p.m. tip is scheduled to be shown on the RSN Network. 

(THANKS TO JARED ANDERSON FOR THE EXCELLENT PHOTOS IN TODAY'S ARTICLE! I got to chat with him briefly after the game...we were the only two in the normally packed Media Room after the game....and that was so eerie. Always good to see my bud, though, and  he'll bring you Tuesday's article with (I'm guessing) a ton more of excellent photos from his floor spot at games.)

paulie

  

Sunday Cardinal Couple - Gameday is Here Again

 Gameday for WBB

The Cards face a pretty quick turnaround from Friday's game against DePaul.  This is a quick shift from a top 20 opponent to a mid-major that has never beaten the Cards.  The series with UT Martin stands at 9-0, with the last win coming just last year, in Tennessee.

The Cards are going to be an odds-on favorite in this one, but this is the type of game that gives some people pause.  Coming off of a hyped, and unquestionably fun, game on Friday, with such a short turn-around limiting the amount of time the team can spend on preparing for a specific opponent, is a common recipe for, well, at least having more challenges with a team than one would otherwise expect.

Add into the recipe, that this is the season opener for the Skyhawks, so the Cards have no current game film to look at, and it makes the short preparation time that much more difficult.  The Skyhawks, on the other hand, have three games worth of game film to look at from UofL.  Oh, and let's not forget, Seygan Robins, who, I think you could say, is pretty familiar with Jeff Walz's coaching and playing style having transfers to UT Martin from UofL after last season.  And the last ingredient to the recipe, this was a pretty recently scheduled game, as part of the shifting sands of college basketball scheduling thanks to Covid.

The only preparation benefit that the Cards have is that the Skyhawks had no seniors on their squad last year, so the squad is largely unchanged.  So let's look at some stats leaders from last year, to give us a bit of an idea of what to expect today.

The points leader is Chelsey Perry, a 6'2" forward from Middleton, TN.  She more than doubled the point production of anyone else on the team, helped by .385 shooting from beyond the arc.  The next producer is Maddie Waldrop, also a 6'2" senior forward.  Waldrop, from Murray, also scores well from range, at a .317 clip.  The most efficient shooter from range is Perry, with Dasia Young placing 2nd in that category, shooting .350, but she only took a little over one long range attempt per game last year.

The leaders on the boards are also Perry and Waldrop.  The 3rd place listing for that stat is "TEAM", which is...unhelpful.  When it comes to ball security, here we see Perry again at the top of the list for steals, but also watch out for the 5'7" Almost-Attack-Yorkie Kyannah Grant out of Choctaw Mississippi.  No word on if she knew Billie Joe MacAllister from the famous song.

(OK, map geek digression:  Choctaw is actually not particularly close to Choctaw Ridge in MS, about 70 miles, though it's roughly as close as the Tallahatchee River is, about 75 miles, so I guess they could still be related as part of the fictional events in the song Ode to Billie Joe.  Amusingly, to get from Choctaw, to Choctaw Ridge, you would drive from near Philadelphia through Louisville, though I believe they pronounce the "s" in their city name.  Yes, these are all places in Mississippi.)

As we discussed on The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast yesterday, our consensus is that UT Martin will try to slow the pace of this game down.  DePaul plays a high pace, track race style of play, and it played right into the hands of this Cardinals team, resulting in a record high scoring outing.  I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an attempt at playing some zone defense with the hope that a good 2-3 zone would force the Cards to try to make some 3pt attempts.  We know there are some good shooters on this UofL squad, but the game statistics thus far suggest it might be a strategy that could help.  I say "might" because the 3pt percentage shooting for the Cards in the EKU and DePaul games weren't bad.  It's only when you include the SEMO game, and it's .118 that the number drops to a concerning result.

Overall, I would look for a solid UofL win, here.  Beware of the post-big-game letdown, but UT Martin comes in as a mid-major without a huge expectation of pulling off a win, here.  This is a game for them to get experience and learn, and in the schedule chaos generator that is Covid, let's just enjoy getting the opportunity for these teams to be healthy and take the floor.

Tune into the ACC Network at noon eastern for this one, or as always, you can hear the great coverage from Nick Curran on 790am in Louisville (just don't pronounce that "s").

A Fantastic Addition

Cardinal Couple is growing!  Daryl Foust is joining the regular rotation of writers here at Cardinal Couple.  You may remember Daryl from her frequent appearances on the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour while we were still being hosted by WCHQ, and she has agreed to join the writer's ranks here at CC.  I believe the plan is that she will be writing the Friday articles, so look forward to that.

We're also working on getting everything set up for her to join us for the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast, so look forward to hopefully hearing her there as well.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

 

Speaking of the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast, we did have what we have called a full house, on the radio show with Case, Jared, Paulie, and myself all present for this.  With the addition of Daryl, I guess we can say we're adding on an extension?

A full hour+ of women's basketball discussion for this episode.  We went in depth about the DePaul game, as you might expect, but also recapped the EKU game that happened this week, with a bit of a look ahead to today's UT Martin game.  The discussion was fun, I hope you have fun listening as well.

JMcA