Tag Archives: Louisville Cardinals

The Cardinals: Who’s Got Next?

Basketball, ,

Been rereading what I along with many others consider among the best primers on the process of writing.

Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird.”

It’s aimed at those wanting to write fiction, novels, short stories. But, there are more than a few observers believe fiction is what appears in this space a lot of the time.

One of her bits of wisdom is to follow where the story, plot development and flushing out of characters take the writer. Don’t be stubborn, locked in to what you thought might happen when you started typing.

On occasion in advance of a Cardinal game, a GameCap lede will come to me in advance, be it peripheral or pertinent. Sometimes it works win or lose. Like that I used for the Cal game the final week of the season.

Other times, it is victory specific. Which, for superstitious reasons, I’ll never write in advance.

Such as what was swirling around in my my hippocampus and amygdala  before the Creighton tilt.

The whole bird thing. Cardinals vs. Blue Jays. Which bird was tougher, meaner? If that could be researched? I had in mind throwing  in some college board lingo, the French term oiseaux, along with probably the term ornithological.

Well, given the result that wasn’t going to happen.

In the car the day after, a tune by a group called Futurebirds came on Sirius XM’s Jam Band site. Continue reading The Cardinals: Who’s Got Next? →

U of L GameCap: Creighton

Basketball, ,

Louisville 75, Creighton 89.

This is not the way a magical turnaround season for the Louisville Cardinals “should” have ended.

But it is how it did come to a close.

I am sad.

I am disappointed.

Every Cardinal fan is going to have their own take on what broke down for the Cards on Thursday afternoon. To be honest, I’m not sure I even wish to peek down that rabbit hole.

And, at some point or another, I might. Or maybe not. Probably not.

The year was simply too  surprisingly joyous a reinstatement of Louisville Basketball to dwell on what may have just been inevitable, all things considered.

There is but a singular statistic that I am choosing to wrap my arms around this gray, too cold beginning-of-spring afternoon.

2,191. Continue reading U of L GameCap: Creighton →

Hoopaholic’s Gazette: Seeding Tsuris

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“This song, a girl took it away from me. A friend of mine. This girl just took this song. I’m gonna do it anyway.”

After which intro at Monterey Pop in ’67, Otis Redding, backed by Duck Dunn, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson Jr., Booker T. Jones, along with the Memphis Horns — Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love — ripped the joint with an incendiary version of “Respect.”

Aretha’s take was righteous, but My Man Otis, he was something else entirely. The best of them all, y’all.

R*E*S*P*E*C*T.

He took his tune back and proved to be the rightful owner at the hippy gathering.

As, he did when I heard him live at Louisville Gardens a few months before his plane crash.

One more analogy. Then we’ll get to the Cardinals. Continue reading Hoopaholic’s Gazette: Seeding Tsuris →

U of L CardFile: Duke (ACC)

Basketball,

Louisville 62, Duke 73.

So, here I sit, Dream Weaver that Pat Kelsey has proven to be, sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Heck, we didn’t even know if it was going to come together at all this year. Some of us have been ill. Others just out of sorts. Some gone.

But in the end we gathered.

And, oh what a feast it’s been. The turkey this time around especially juicy and tasty. Gotta remember what kind for next year. The oyster dressing positively sublime.

Oh my, the garlic truffle mashed potatoes. Haven’t had those before. It won’t be the last.

Saved Aunt Martha’s to-die-for green bean casserole for last. It was a bit off frankly. Disappointing.

Have to remember she’s been hurting. Visits to the doc and PT.

Yet I push away from the table, loosen my belt which, imagine my surprise, has gotten a little tight over the last while.

I am savoring the whole deal. The glorious wonder of it all. Continue reading U of L CardFile: Duke (ACC) →

U of L CardFile: Clemson (ACC)

Basketball,

Short playlist for a second escape in a row, Friday night’s 76-73 survival of the fittest W over Clemson in the ACC semi.

Cue the JJ Cale:

After midnight, we’re gonna let it all hang down/ After midnight, we’re gonna chug-a-lug and shout/ We’re gonna stimulate some action/ We’re gonna get some satisfaction/ We’re gonna find out what it is all about/ After midnight, we’re gonna let it all hang down

During the end game intensity the camera panned to an orange clad fan, waving a towel that read: “Built by Grit.”

Tsk, tsk, ma’am.

You saw grit as tested as it might get this time of year, and it wasn’t wearing orange and purple.

Pat Kelsey: “We gritted out a tough win.” Continue reading U of L CardFile: Clemson (ACC) →

Some Takeaways on the Getaway

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We don’t want to stop chatting about Thursday night, do we?

But before you are inundated by my shtick, there’s this in the realm of adhering to correctitude when a mea culpa is called for:

Eagle-eyed loyal reader and adherer to all matters Hippocratic, Flaky caught the mistake. So I will reiterate a correction to the GameCap lede. Which, since it wasn’t result sensitive, was penned in advance. Louisville played Memphis State end of season/ tourney back to back in ’83, not ’86. The Milt game was in ’86 finale, but the schools had a game in between the season finale and their encounter in the Metro tournament. For the record, the final tally on that quartet of tilts: Cards 4, Tigers nil. 

Which is why, I must suppose, the ’86 title tee I adorned for the game worked. Even if my memory was off 1095 days. More or less.

 * * * * *

So, having actually gotten to slumber at a somewhat reasonable hour, the phone rang an hour and a half later, after midnight from Doc. Who, because of early rounds usually is in bed before me. A bit shocked I picked up but begged off conversation in hopes for no lost ZZZZZs. Continue reading Some Takeaways on the Getaway →

U of L CardFile: Stanford (ACC)

Basketball,

Beating a conference foe twice in a season is always a task.

Especially when that opponent is a 20 game winner.

Especially when that adversary has designs on pulling a NC State and score an invite to the Prom a week hence with a league tourney run.

Most very seriously especially when the schools met less than a week ago, a U of L victory which was significantly tougher to accomplish than the 68-48 final tally would indicate.

The last time Louisville met the same league rival in the final game of the season and its next encounter in a league tournament was 1986. Memphis State.

Which if you recall turned out well for the Cards.

64-62 Cards in the Freedom Hall regular season finale. I won’t go over the details which I have more than enough in times past, plus it’s one of the more iconic U of L Ws ever. Two words: Milt Wagner. Three more: At the Line.

Correction: That back to back happened in ’83 not ’86. The Milt Wagner game was in the championship year of ’86. My apologies. Don’t get old, you lose your memory. 

Wonder what Andre Turner’s doing these days.

Victory so nice, days later Cardinals did it twice. 71-68 in the Metro Tourney.

That Louisville squad went to, oh, you know.

 * * * * *

So, where to start? Continue reading U of L CardFile: Stanford (ACC) →

Junior

Basketball, ,

Too often Mama Nature feels compelled to remind us how life really works.

Her sense of humor can be, let us say, not so funny. Bracing in fact.

One month you’re the cover story in Forbes magazine.

The next, you have a fatal heart attack while sharing your wisdom and experience to a Boy Scout gathering in a hotel ballroom.

Which is to say, the lesson is as ever, carpe the diem. You never know.

I’m sure I read or tried to read Homer’s The Odyssey. They used to not let you graduate most universities without being able to share the story of the leading man and the sirens.

I tried to read James Joyce’s Ulysses. Quit, I swear it to be true, after no more than 5-8 paragraphs. Life’s too short to have to work so hard.

I never met Ulysses Bridgeman.

But I saw Junior Bridgeman play in his first varsity game as a Cardinal. Continue reading Junior →

Seedy K’s Marvelous, Magnificent, Magical, Truly Epic Saturday

Basketball,

I am a sucker for a Big Game. Which is not necessarily the same as a Championship Game. It is not necessarily the same as an Important Game, as defined by television hucksters. A Big Game is more than that. It is a piece of living history, a theater of the generations with an outcome more compelling than theater of any other kind. Thousands of actors have played Hamlet, but Hamlet always dies. Thousands of players have played in the Harvard-Yale football game, and very few of them have the same story to tell. If all the elements are right, and if history has aligned correctly with the emotion of the moment, I would rather be at a Big Game than almost anywhere else in the world. — Charles Pierce

As with Hamlet, and the thousands who have played him through the centuries, there have been many Cardinal PGs of consequence through the decades. Jim Morgan. Jadie Frazier. Fred Holden. Jim Price. Phil Bond. Lancaster Gordon. Dejuan Wheat. Edgar Sosa. Peyton Siva. Carlick Jones.

Saturday was the curtain call for the latest, Chucky Hepburn, and his fellow leading men.

This was a Big Game. Not a championship game. Not necessarily an important game.

A Big Game. Continue reading Seedy K’s Marvelous, Magnificent, Magical, Truly Epic Saturday →

U of L CardFile: Stanford

Basketball,

My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil. — J. Paul Getty

Ladies and Gents, Cardinal Lovers everywhere, the University of Louisville has a gusher on the property.

Pat Kelsey is all that and more.

Louisville 68, Stanford 48.

Since December 14, 2024, U of L has lost one game.

While winning 19.

Through injuries. Through sickness. Through . . . essentially . . . whatever.

With Cardinal bombardier Reyne Smith sidelined for Senior Day, the Cards’ keeper coach fashioned another masterpiece.

Developed to play full speed. Lots of ball movement. Louisville needed to play slow. And smart.

So they did.

They needed to trickerate the visiting Cardinal on occasion. So they did, as when PK called for some full court pressure on several key possessions late.

Pat Kelsey (and his entire staff) is/are the whole package.

He’s the Rah Rah. The master roster formulator. He can prepare. He can tweak in game.

 * * * * *

As I stood at courtside as the postgame Senior Day festivities, with most of the 18,707 hanging around to bask in the joy, I was totally discombobulated. Verklempt. Frankly, crying from the happy.

Muttering over an over again, “I love the Cardinals.” Continue reading U of L CardFile: Stanford →