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You might have figured out that many of us here at Cardinal Couple like musical references and borrowing themes from songs.

Today's theme: "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life" from Monty Python's Life of Brian.

To that end, we're going to keep this first section really short.

Football

Boston College, who is, let's face it, the traditional doormat of the ACC Atlantic division, came in to PJCS and hung an L on the Cardinal Football team, 45-42.  Novels could be written about this one, and I suspect, if you combine the output of various sports media properties associated with Cardinal Athletics, essentially one has already been written.

Moving on.

Swimming and Diving

The SMU Classic has wrapped up and UofL Swimming and Diving finished the competition in 2nd place.  8th ranked USC just narrowly edged UofL out of the top spot, by half a point.  UofL came into the competition ranked 7th, and beat out 6th ranked Michigan by 8 and a half points.

Mallory Comerford won all 3 of the events she entered, the 500 free...she's not just a sprinter, folks...the 100 free, and the 200 free relay.  Beyond those victories, there were a lot of 2nd and 3rd place finishes.

The other victory for the Cards last night was in the 200 medley relay, with Alina Kendzior, Maria Astashkina, Grace Oglesby, and Lainey Visscher.  Molly Fears, who won the 1-meter springboard event Friday evening, came in 4th in the 3-meter event.

This meet was a great showing, in a unique format, by one of the most successful teams at UofL right now against very high level competition.

Field Hockey

We've said it many times before.  ACC Field Hockey is mind-bogglingly good.  UofL met the latest challenge in the conference gauntlet with the #11 Cardinals squad meeting the #5 North Carolina squad.  

While it was a bit of a lackluster first half, they did go into halftime tied with the TarHeels at one apiece.  The Cardinals goal came on a corner with 12 minutes left in the first half.  Marisa Martin Pelegrina inbounded the corner, Katie Walsh provided the stop, and Minout "I score goals" Mink fired it home.  If you're keeping track, and I think Jared has given up at this point, that's a team leading nine for her on the season.

The Cardinals would score again early in the 2nd half on another corner.  Abby Grimes gets the tally on this one off the stop by Marigrace Ragsdale.  The insert came from Marisa Martin Pelegrina.  UNC would tie it up again at 2-2 on a rebound from a shot.  The final, game winning, score of the game came just a couple of minutes later with just under 10 minutes left in the game when Taylor Stone to the rock to the hole unassisted.

With about 8 minutes left in the game, UNC called a timeout and lifted their GK to get a little more offense on the field.  The Cards were able to hold off the extra attacking and finish out the game with the 3-2 win.

This is another huge positive result for the Field Hockey squad.  After their woes early in the season on penalty corners, it's good to see them pull that part of play together and get two goals out of their corners.

In ACC standings, this win leaves the Cards tied for 1st with only Virginia, dropping UNC to 3-2, compared to the 4-1 records of UofL and UVA.  Duke also holds a 3-2 record to hold the tie with UNC in 3rd.  Beyond that, the standings are Wake Forest at 2-3, Syracuse at 2-4, and Boston College at 0-5.

Next Up

On tap today, all four of the golf and tennis squads are in action.  Only Men's Tennis is here in the 'Ville, at Bass-Rudd hosting the Louisville Invitational.

In team sports, Volleyball finishes the weekend at home with a 3 o'clock start (note the later than typical start time!) against Georgia Tech.  I've said in past articles and on the radio that GT really shouldn't be a major challenge for this UofL team the way the Cards have been playing, Dani Busboom Kelly, after the Clemson match Friday, disagreed, and GT really is something of an enigma.  In one week of play, they lost in four to Boston College, who isn't an absolutely awful team...but they're not very good, either.  Then they go in Friday and beat Notre Dame in 4.  OK, Notre Dame isn't the powerhouse they used to be, they're rebuilding (and rebuilding fast!), but they can put up some stiff competition and GT rose to the challenge.  Admittedly, Notre Dame is also a bit of an enigma this year, having split a two match home and home weekend with Ohio State, though that's somewhat explicable by pointing out that each team won on their home floor.  Then they went 1-1 on a weekend at home losing to Miami and beating Florida State.  And, ok, you can kind of explain that by pointing out that FSU isn't nearly as good as we thought they were early in the season, but they are still a good team.  The takeaway from all of this I think can only be, if you're trying to predict outcomes in ACC volleyball right now, Good Luck!  If UofL shows up and plays the way that we know they are capable of playing, this should be a win today, but things are topsy turvy enough around the conference that it's really hard to get a good feel of how good various teams are, and that certainly includes the engineers from Atlanta.

CCRH

The recording of The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour is up on the Soundcloud.  You can listen to the replay, here.  I was able to catch most of the broadcast via TuneIn in my car on my way to Indianapolis where I joined my mother for a zany 20 minute dash in and out of an opening weekend Ikea store.  What I will say is that the Swedes (did you know that they're actually headquartered in The Netherlands, now?) know how to do traffic and crowd control really well.  Over 7,000 had entered the store as we were going in at around 1pm, and yet we were able to make it in, pick up what we needed and get out in 20 minutes.  Impressive!

Back on topic, I was able to hear Jared, JC, and Case cover the latest, and deal with the tense confusion of pre-recorded shows ("This event will have been played by the time you hear this.").  They did a fine job, and it was an excellent show, please check it out if you didn't hear it at broadcast time.

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JMcA

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Breaking News: Sunday Cardinal Couple - News Paper