A Winning Weekend - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Volleyball Wins

In a match that, in a normal year, would've been Senior Night, the wide net Cards finished off the complete sweep of a good Syracuse squad.  In the CCRH, we all concluded that last night's volleyball match should be closer and more competitive than the Friday night match.  While the results were still a 3 set sweep, the play was much more competitive, and the set scores show it, 25-18, 25-21, 27-25.

Amaya Tillman and Aiko Jones probably
getting a block

The Syracuse squad in L&N Federal Credit Union Arena last night was much more like the Syracuse squad we all expected to see here in Louisville.  The Orange outblocked the Cards 9-7, and held Louisville to just .216 hitting.  Of course, the New Yorkers only hit .136.  The lesson being that just slowing down your opponent's offense isn't enough, you have to generate some offense of your own if you want to win games.

Things started well for the Cards, with a jump out to a 8-2 lead in the first set before the Orange seemed to wake up a little bit.  The two team would largely trade points the rest of the way through this set, but Syracuse would not be able to close the gap.  In the end, a powerful hit by Anna DeBeer would get the Cards the early set lead.

Louisville would play from behind in the 2nd when Syracuse got a 4-0 run early in the set to pull out from a 5-5 tie to 9-5.  More even play in the set would see Syracuse maintain that lead through 16-12 when the Cards would go on a mini run of three to shrink the gap, but not close it.  Finally, the Cards had enough and went on a six point run to take the lead and stretch it out to 22-18, helped in the process by Tori Dilfer's strong serving.  Syracuse could do nothing to close the gap, and Anna Stevenson would close this one out with a bit of an awkward looking, but effective, hit in the middle.

Aiko Jones getting to the hit before the
blockers can close out

The last set was a game of runs.  It started inauspiciously for the Cards with a pair of attack errors, but they quickly composed themselves and took a 6-2 lead including a string of three straight Aiko Jones kills.  The Orange would immediately get three of those back on good serving by the Israeli member of the Syracuse team, Ella Saada.  The Cards offense was playing well, but errors, mostly from the service line, kept them from putting together the next run.  The Cards would push out a slim lead 13-9, but then the Syracuse blocking would be instrumental in an 8-1 run to eliminate a four point Cardinal lead and get out in front at 18-15.  A pair of three point mini runs by the Cards would close down that lead and push the set into needing bonus points, tying it up at 24.  Finally, Aiko Jones would say, enough is enough and with a kill, a joint block with Amaya Tillman, and another kill would put the bow on this one, and send Syracuse back home without a set win in the weekend at all.

From a subjective and stats driven analysis, the same conclusions.  Our passing and digging were better this match.  This has been the weakest link of a pretty strong chain, but the numbers look good, with 16 digs for Libero Alexis Hamilton, and 12 for full-rotation player Claire Chaussee, the rest of the squad was all in the low to mid single digits.  I'd like to see more out of the DSes that are seeing time on the court, mostly Ayden Bartlett who only had a pair, but none from Alexa Hendricks, Mia Stander, and Ceci Rush is a little concerning.  To be fair to this trio though, they are mostly being used as serving specialists right now, so their time on the floor is limited.  Credit Claire Chaussee and Aiko Jones being fully capable of playing full rotations for limiting the role of the DSes.

Freshman Anna DeBeer showing her power

In hitting, Aiko Jones led the team with 17 and a reasonable .270, the newcomer, freshman Anna DeBeer showed her power with 12 on .259.  Perhaps keep an eye out this week for a Freshman of the Week honor?  I haven't looked around the league to see what others have been up to in comparison, but I'll be keeping an eye out.  The other Anna, Stevenson, only had seven kills, but it was an extremely efficient seven on nine attempts and only a single miscue, for .667.  A trio of service aces is a decent showing, but more importantly, keeping the service errors from getting out of control with only five helps.

Louisville will take the next week off, and then finish off the season the week after with perhaps the biggest challenge of this odd-ball season by heading up to Pitt for a pair of matches.

Field Hockey Wins

Wake Forest and Hurricane (well, Tropical Storm by that point) Delta made things interesting in Winston-Salem yesterday in Field Hockey.  The Cards would get the win 2-1 with scores in the 1st and 4th quarters.

A significant discussion point around this one was the impact tropical system Delta would have on the play and the field.  It wasn't clear, even as game time approached, just how much rain would be involved, and based on the comments from the play by play and color people on the telecast, it was looking like they would get away with minimal impacts, right up until the first pass.

But the heavens would open up and a significant amount of water would fall in the 1st half of play.  Normally I would point out that turf fields are routinely sprayed down with water to improve the playing surface for field hockey, so a little bit of rain just means a lower water bill for the hosting team.  However, in this case, there was enough rain in a short period of time to cause ponding on the field and that will have a dramatic impact on passes and part of the game, even altered how injections on penalty corners were attempted by the team to try to avoid water puddles.

The rain would largely stop, or at least slow down to a very light rain, and the field drained well for the 2nd half.

Beyond Delta, Wake Forest would keep things interesting as well, equally the Cards mark for Shots on Goal with 5, keeping Hollyn Barr busy in the cage.  When you broaden to overall shots, the Cards only held a slim edge at 12-10.

The Cards scoring got started late in the 1st quarter with Erica Cooper picking up a cross from Madison Walsh and firing it home. That was Cooper's 2nd goal of the season.  Wake would press their attack in the 2nd quarter, but Barr would get a pair of excellent saves to keep the Demon Deacons off the scoreboard in the first half.

That wouldn't hold in the 3rd quarter, though as Anne van Hoof would get a score four minutes in.  And, yes, van Hoof is indeed from the Netherlands as you might have guessed from her name.  The Cards would press their attack in the later part of the quarter, with eight shots and five penalty corners, but would not be successful in any of them.

The offensive attack would pay off in the opening minute of the 4th quarter, with the injection from Alli Bitting to Meghan Schneider for the stop to present the shot to Emilia Kaczmarczyk who fired it into the cage.  That would also be Kaczmarczyk's 2nd goal of the season.

Meche Pastor lead the team in shots, with 6, but she only put one on frame.  To her credit, however, for much of the game, she was drawing two and three defenders off of other Cardinal players to contain her.

The Cards will face Wake Forest again today at 2pm, again on RSN (so look around at the various Fox Sports Channels, Fox Sports South is a likely candidate).  This match up will not count for the conference record, but will apply to the overall record of the teams, the joys of being in the ACC, the only conference in NCAA DI playing field hockey at all.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

Finally, I think it was a winning outing for the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour.  With the normal full house, Case, Jared, Paulie, and myself ran through analysis and results of Volleyball, Field Hockey, and Women's Soccer in our ongoing quest to share the joy and excitement of UofL women's sports.

A fun hour, that we kept pretty close to the hour limit so we could shift our attentions over to the field hockey game starting right after.

If you missed it, of course you can join the fun below, or via the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour podcast which should be available at this point via all your normal podcast outlets and directories.

Volleyball and Soccer - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Volleyball

Volleyball hosted their annual Red and Black scrimmage at the newly renovated Cardinal Arena which will be home to all of the UofL home matches this year.  The renewed facility looks great, apparently seats approximately 1200, and the seats and access are all more comfortable and easier to manage.

Though the event is titled the Red and Black Scrimmage, they actually played Red vs White.  The white team consisted of what I expect to be the starting line-up, while the red team competed very well (25-20, 25-23, 25-21) to give them some competition.

There are no official box scores for this exhibition match, but Associate SID for Volleyball, Nancy Worley did share a couple of stats in her post-match write-up.  Tess Clark, now swinging away on the outside, had 17 kills, and Amanda Green, the transfer that joined the team in January, had 14.  Both were playing for the white team.

In more subjective observations, Wilma Rivera, a junior transfer from Penn State, showed quite well what she is made of.  Another lefty, Rivera will join fellow southpaw Gabbie Wiley in creating a threat for UofL from the service line.  At 5'10" she has the height to be able to effectively block, and is just generally one of the most athletic setters I've seen in a long time.  In a couple of plays she did what I guess would technically would be considered a setter dump, but by putting a little bit of loft on the hit, she aimed for the very back corner of the opponent's court.  Both were targeted wonderfully, one was reached by the defense, but the other dropped in for the point about a foot away from both the sideline and the backline.  The precision of the targeting of the shots was impressive.  I think Cardinal fans are going to be impressed by this Puerto Rican.

I think it's clear, if you've read Cardinal Couple for the past couple of years that I'm a fan of Molly Sauer, and she continues to quietly, without drawing a lot of attention to herself, make this whole team better.  Alexis Hamilton, also in defense, showed that the recruiting praise was deserved.

Kali Eaken showed that she will be ready to go to fill in for Wilma on a moment's notice.  She lacks a little bit of Rivera's athleticism, but she is a good setter, so we're in good shape in that position.  Alexia Byrnes, a freshman setter, also got some reps at the position.  Piper Roe, after a minor ankle turn to Maggie DeJong early in the match switched from Red to White and played well, she will be called on to fill in when either Maggie or Jasmine Bennett are unable to play.  On the red side, Coline Coessens had some good swings, and Megan Sloan has shown, in addition to sporting a sleaker, slimmer, and more toned frame, the improvement in her game.  In defense, Natalie Palastro and Akela Yuhl, both freshmen, held their own, and with a little bit of an assist from a quite good practice player, and assistant coaches Dan Meske and Kolby O'Donnell really did a fine job providing good competition for the white team.

I did get some audio from after the Red and Black Scrimmage from Coach Busboom Kelly, and will be working to get it posted where it can be listened to soon.

All in all, I'm excited for the season to get underway.  It will do so Friday in Madison WI at the ACC/Big 10 Challenge.  UofL will be playing host Wisconsin who is finally without their stellar, she-finally-graduated, setter Lauren Carlini.  That match is Friday at 7:30 if you're in Madison, 8:30 for us Eastern Time folk.  Saturday they'll be playing Minnesota at 4 Central, 5 Eastern.  There is no TV or video streaming listed.  There is a radio link for the Saturday match on an IHeartRadio channel.  It'll be on 100.9FM in Madison, a frequency that is near and dear to our hearts here at Cardinal Couple as that's also the frequency that Crescent Hill Radio, our hosts for The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour, broadcasts on here in Louisville.

Soccer

Men's Soccer wrapped up their exhibition play last night with some very late game heroics to salvage the draw.

Watterson "Freeway" Young scored for the Cards in the 90th minute, to tie up the game at 1-1 vs the Oakland Bears.

They will be opening their official season this Friday at Lynn Stadium vs UC Irvine, The Anteaters...what a fantastic mascot!

 The game will start at 7:30 and should be a great way to spend a Friday evening...although we doubt UC Irvine brings the anteater with them.



Field Hockey

The Field Hockey team faced the Alums yesterday and it was one sided...as you might expect. No official stats were kept for the contest...but it was 11-0 undergrads over the grads. 33 showed up to play (or watch) for the alums and it was good to see them back out applying their skills.

4-0 at the half and the scoring onslaught really didn't get underway until the latter part of the final half...when the alums were getting a bit tired and substituting a few "veteran" players. Still, an aggressive effort by Justine Sowry's current squad.

I do know Taylor Stone had a few scores, so did Minnie Mink, Madison Walsh and Marigrace Ragsdale.

The highlight of the day was when a random person off the street walked through the middle of the field just as the game was ready to start and the alumni lined up to attack. She walked over to the UofL bench...exited and then came back across the field later as action was underway...racross the middle of the field again. With no "Yellow Shirts" present...she was unencumbered on her "stroll" but the police were called and she was eventually escorted out of Trager Stadium by University staffers.

Weird. Maybe she wanted to play....

JUSTINE SOWRY DISCUSSES ALUMNI GAME

Radio

Speaking of The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour, the latest show is available at the usual location in the SoundCloud.  We were graced with the presence of Daryl Faust in studio.  Paulie let her know that her co-hort in Daryl-dom, Daryl Bell, on the Women's Soccer team, is expected to be out for the season with a knee injury.  It was a fun show, and Daryl really classes the place up over us knuckleheads, so do check it out.

There's audio from Field Hockey and Women's Soccer during the show and Worldwide successfully defended his title as "king of the quizzes"...although Daryl did manage a tie with him. The alleged protest  on one of the answers was over-ruled by Paulie in a psuedo-tense moment of airtime. Prima donnas...they're everywhere.

-- JMcA

The Next NCAA Sport? FRIDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

New NCAA Sport?

The NCAA recently added Beach Volleyball as a varsity sport.  Is Mud Volleyball next?

Last weekend, rising UofL Volleyball senior Gabbie Wiley, with her vicious lefty serve and excellent defensive specialist skills, competed in a long tradition in her hometown Hannibal, MO.  WGEM had a small piece about Wiley's participating in the Mud Volleyball tournament, helping to defend the "Wallaby's" championship again.

The Mud Volleyball tournament is part of the National Tom Sawyer Days festivities in Hannibal, MO.  Mark Twain, the author of the novel Tom Sawyer, upon which the festival is based, was raised in Hannibal, and the festival has long been a staple of summer society in the area.

Unfortunately, WGEM arrived at the festival early in the tournament when the Wallaby's had drawn a bye as the defending champions, so there is no video or pictures of Wiley actually playing in the mud.  She did, however, send us this post-competition picture.

Other Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain themed events at the Tom Sawyer Days festival include fence painting and frog jumping contests.

Wiley will be a senior this fall on the UofL Volleyball team and plays as a defensive specialist, with some matches chalking up dig number that rival Libero Molly Sauer's numbers in about half of the rotations.  She also has a powerful jump serve that, combined with the opposite spin put on it from her being a left-hander, frequently stymies the opposition.  She has been named to the Athletic Director Honor Roll for the past two years while majoring in exercise science as a pre-med course of study.

Look for Gabbie in number 4 on the court this fall, where we're expecting she'll get quite a bit of playing time in the back row.

Season Ticket Selection for Volleyball Underway

Season ticket selection for their move back to the newly renovated Cardinal Arena (still a work in progress, but expected to be done before the season starts, of course), have begun for previous season ticket holders.

The selection process is handled through a Ticketmaster website and shows the typical 6 side sections that Cardinal Arena has sported since it was built, although with, perhaps, a few extra rows added, along with 8 "Terrace" seating sections.  The Terrace seating sections are the most visible changes to Cardinal Arena in the pictures being posted by the UofLVolleyball Twitter account most Tuesdays.  There will only be two or three rows of seats in the Terrace sections, but they should provide some fantastic views of the court, and if you really want to have the best view to see play develop and watch the tactics and strategy of play, they will likely be the best seats in the house.

Season tickets are $84, while Terrace seats will have a $150 donation to the Cardinal Athletic Fund attached to them.

ASIA TAYLOR on The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

You won't want to miss this Saturday's radio show. 

Paulie has an interview with Louisville WBB and Washington Mystics WNBA player Asia Taylor that we'll be playing as part of our catching up with former Cards WBB greats. 

Last week's interview with Sara Hammond was excellent and we expect no less than that with #31! 

The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

-- JMcA

Special Edition--- Anne Kordes discusses her resignation -- MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

**************SPECIAL EDITION*************



ANNE KORDES PRESS CONFERENCE

UofL volleyball coach Anne Kordes held an informal press conference Monday afternoon at the YUM! Practice Facility on campus "The Little YUM" to discuss her decision to resign from her duties at the end of this season.

For Kordes, the decision is two-fold. First, she wants to have another child and needs time off...at least two weeks...to undergo the fertility treatments necessary. Kordes has been trying over the last six months...but due to job requirements...unable to fully undergo the recommended steps. As a single mother, the juggling of raising a daughter and recruit successfully had become an area where a change was needed. 

Also, there has been a desire to go into "the family business" with her father Ron Kordes. Ron is heavily involved in the Louisville and regional Volleyball scene...as a long-time head coach at Assumption High School and the OVVC (Ohio Valley Volleyball Center) and the job would allow such perks as having her children able to go to work with her. 

A nationwide search is underway to find her successor and Anne revealed that she has already begun to receive calls from coaches about her associate (Alex Wilharm) and assistant coach (Alyssa D'Errico)

Hear the entire press conference at the link below

LINK: Anne Kordes Press Conference 11/21/16

We, at CARDINAL COUPLE...wish Anne the best of success and luck in the future endeavors and appreciate immensely the kind and all-access she has provided us over the years.

paulie
xxxxx

Cards Start Big East Play 2-0 at the Yum! Center

The UofL Volleyball team swept both St. John's and UCONN to start Big East play 2-0. They also started out their stretch of Yum! Center games 2-0. The Cardinals were never seriously threatened in either match. They beat St. John's 25-19, 25-14 and then 25-23 and they beat UCONN 25-7, 25-13 and 25-20. The 7 UCONN had in the first set Sunday was tied for the lowest score in any set in the 25 set era (2008-present) for a Louisville opponent.

Lola Arslanbekova was amazing Friday night as she notched her fourth straight double-double. Sunday, she added 18 kills and moved into 10th all-time in kills for a career passing Jackie Bryne.

Emily Juhl also had a nice night Friday, she had 4 aces and 12 kills. Sunday night Caitlin Welch and Taylor Brauneis looked great. Welch had 21 digs and 2 aces, the 21 digs set a record for the Cards in a three-setter in the 25 set era. Brauneis recorded a double-double with 37 assists and 11 digs.

Coach Anne Kordes told me she was very happy with the atmosphere, and called the Yum! Center "the best Volleyball venue in the nation." However, she urges all Cards fans to show up for the remaining 4 games at the Yum! Center.

The two wins set the Cards record at 10-4 (2-0). Their next 5 games are on the road starting with DePaul September 30th. They return to the Yum Center October 23rd against Pitt.