This shall be blissfully brief.

A proverbial quick read.

Tuesday evening at 6:36, this historically horrible season for the University of Louisville Men’s Basketball team ended in an appropriately ignominious manner.

Such that I simply am not going to print out the final score.

Nor offer insight or explanation.

I considered various and sundry ways of expressing how I feel right now. And giving one guy’s take of an overall perspective of what happened over the course of the campaign.

At this time, I demur.

Perhaps I will in the future.

Perhaps not.

It’s time to take a break and just kick back from this.

As a hoops junkie, I’m locked into the rest of the season. I love March Madness.

I understand that many are not. We each make our choices.

Go Cards!

c d k

Do I skip right to the Cruelest Blow?

Or, wend my way there, so you’ll read more of this latest vent about the freefall of the University of Louisville Men’s Basketball Program?

Prepare thyselves, ’tis the latter, because . . .

. . . I had a great opening for this piece on Monday, but was saving for this story after the UVa game, which I now shall use.

(Perhaps I’ve mentioned before, my writing, such as it is, flows better if the opening line comes. Which, in this case, it did.)

So, here goes. Continue reading Louisville Langour: It’s Bad, It’s Nationwide →

Mr. Bunny’s call before U of L’s regular season finale began, as is his MO, not with a salutation, but a leading question.

“You agree, right, the Cardinals are a lock for the NCAA?”

“Uh, no.”

Louisville lost to Virginia, as they most always do, and didn’t look especially good doing it.

Thus, I am fully in touch with my inner Seth Greenberg.

Not the guy in the studio with ‘Phons, who sometime Wednesday night will be discussing the state of the Cardinals amid the Championship Week chitter chatter.

The Cards will have beaten Duke. At which point, the conversation will hearken back to some time in the long distant past when the talking heads will wonder if anybody’s bested the Blue Devils thrice in a season? Like maybe the Tar Heels back in the day of Charlie Scott or Lennie Rosenbluth. Duke will be the focus; U of L, an afterthought. Continue reading A Bubblicious Hoopaholic On Tenterhooks →

How bad a football team is Syracuse?

Very.

One has to wonder how on earth the Orange, for its only victory, bested Georgia Tech? By three scores no less.

The same Ramblin’ Wreck squad which battered U of L its next time out. By three scores+.

The University of Louisville Cardinals are a moderately better football team than its Friday evening foe.

Operative word: Moderately. Continue reading Louisville CardFile: Syracuse →

Bottom line is I should have taken last weekend off. Like the majority of the Top 20.

But no, I stayed the course and suffered for it.

2 Ws. 3 Ls. 33-19 on the year.

Not to worry. I fired my entire staff, and am feeling rejuvenated with fresh input, heading into the most important weekend of the year.

For the first time in college football history, there will be two battles on the same Saturday in which both combatants are 8-0.

And the Louisville Cardinals take their first stab this year at bowl eligibility.

Let’s go. And don’t be telling me how I only choose easy games to predict. Continue reading Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Week XI →

The College World Series draw can be a cruel mistress.

Win the opener and the possibilities for success multiply. Drop the first one, and matters get dire.

In an opener, which is the only one to feature two national seeds, between college baseball’s winningest squads this decade, Vandy the higher-seeded favorite, in this game and to win the title, prevailed. 3-1.

Louisville will face the Auburn/ Mississippi loser Tuesday afternoon. Defeated departs. Winner gets life, but will still have to win three more in a row to advance to the title 2 of 3.

While falling to the Commodores doesn’t feel good, it’s no disgrace. U of L’s very familiar regional rival was ranked either #1 or #2 in all the pre-season polls. Vanderbilt finished #2 in all the polls, behind UCLA, which was swept in its Supers by the surging Michigan Wolverines.

Vandy’s ascendency into the sport’s upper echelon pretty much parallels U of L’s. But the Nashvillians have fared significantly better in their four CWS appearances than U of L’s now 2-9 record in five. They won it all in ’14, winning the opener against U of L, and were runners up the following season. Vandy’s harvested the highest rated recruiting class four of the last five seasons. Continue reading Cards fall 3-1 in CWS Opener →

Not a lot of schools have ventured into The Jim this season with a hurler more heralded than the ACC’s best, Cardinal Reid Detmers (11-4, 2.96), he who now holds Louisville’s  all time season strikeout record, 156 and counting before Friday noon’s first pitch.

But, in addition to holding a hard to conceptualize 10 game winning streak against U of L, that’s exactly the East Carolina held in its hands.

Jake Agnos (11-2, 2.02) was dubbed First Team All-American by Collegiate Baseball.

And he had the rabid and raucous Pirate faithful pumped to the max, when he struck out the side in the bottom of the 1st, and proceeded to mow down the first ten Cardinals he faced.

Meanwhile, Detmers was a bit off his feed, which seemed a bad omen against the hard hitting ECU lineup, featuring six .300+ batters and a couple of guys with homer totals well into the teens. Despite struggling a might, he was able to get out of the 1st, stranding two visitors. The Pirates were three up three down in the 2d, but threatened hugely in the the 3d. (Yeah, I used the word “hugely,” deal with it.) Continue reading Cards Roll Pirates in Supers’ Opener, 14-1 →

The bracket, thank you for your annual beneficence Naismithius, has arrived.

As usual, it is a veritable menagerie of creatures, strange and not so.

Bruins, Bison, Bulls, Bulldogs, Buckeyes, Bears, and Bearcats.

Once again, our memories short, we are compelled to inquire: What exactly is a Billiken?

Cavaliers and Monarchs.

Cyclones and Flames.

Anteaters and Ducks.

Sooners and Volunteers.

Gaels, Gators and Grizzlies.

Tigers and Wildcats and more Wildcats.

Since we know that Orangoutangs, none of which sadly shall be participating in the Dance, are skeptical of changes in their cages, there is another query soon to be answered.

With Carl Spackler on their side, will Louisville’s Cardinals eradicate those varmint Golden Gophers?

And, while we’re at it, will Rick the Elder escape from exile in Greece to watch Rick the Younger coach against their former school? I mean, it’s the kind of thing this father is prone to do. Continue reading It’s March, and I’m Just Mad about Madness →

The 2018-19 University of Louisville Cardinals continue to amaze.

Not that a 13 point mid December homecourt victory over #147 Kent State in and of itself is an earth shattering result.

It was the manner of the win.

It was the apparent visual and empirical evidence of game by game by game improvement that was yet again manifest.

There are reasons aplenty for the faithful’s burgeoning exuberance about this plucky band of Cards.

And the mack daddy of them all is . . . all together now . . . Chris Mack.

(Yes, kids, I can go literary and verbose, and I can go hip hop. At least as street as a septuagenarian with a bum wheel can go.)

So, before we get to the game itself, some props for that new guy on the bench. Continue reading Louisville CardFile: Kent State →