Louisville’s Karen Ferguson-Dayes brought her young Cardinals team to Klockner sporting a career record 194 – 173 – 38 over the past 21 years.  She’s built a fairly successful program at Louisville with multiple visits to the NCAA tournament and a first round draft pick last year in the person of Emina Ekic.  Virginia’s Steve Swanson possesses a career record of 339 – 99 – 52 over a similar 20+ year tenure.  The gulf between their records was mirrored by the gulf between their respective team’s play on the field.  This game was never in doubt.

Virginia         4
Louisville      1

Louisville’s doom was sealed quickly.  Within the game’s first minute, Lia Godfrey stole the ball (more on that later) in Louisville’s box and immediately fed Alexa Spaanstra for a point blank shot.  It was only a great block that kept Virginia off the scoreboard.  On the ensuing corner kick, Louisville’s keeper, Gabby Kouzelos, came off her line and got stuck in no-man’s land and ended up putting the ball into her own net.  Such is the fear that having both Haley Hopkins and Diana Ordonez in the center of the box inspires. It was a shocking error for a two-time All-ACC performer.

It’s tough to be a mid-table team and spot Virginia a goal in the first 90 seconds.

Notre Dame had tried to stack midfield via the 3 – 5 – 2 and Louisville tried to do the same utilizing a more defensive 4 – 5 – 1.  The results were similar.  Spaanstra simply laid waste to the left side of the Cardinals’ back line all game, to the point that I couldn’t tell who was supposed to be guarding her.  Torres had maybe her finest game offensively on the season.  Torres is my favorite player to watch with an engine that never quits and a sublime ability to turn away from pressure.  But since getting hurt sometime last summer, before the season started, I don’t think she’s played up to her own high standards.  To me, this was her most complete game of the season.

20 minutes later, Godfrey won the ball at the edge of the Louisville box, shrugged off a defender, and drove to the end line where she had a full two seconds to stand over the ball before delivering a perfect strike that Ordonez powered in for the team’s second goal.

Godfrey is an amazing player and she’s rapidly becoming on the best on-ball defenders I have ever seen.  She’s very good at stripping the ball from an attacker simply by slipping between the player and the ball.  And she’s quite rugged for a woman who stands at just 5’4” as her play before her assist attests.  Her play, coupled with Ordonez’ increasingly fine defensive game has allowed Virginia to be more effective pressing the opposing team without the entire team having to sell out as a pressing team.  Spaanstra has always been a willing defender – she’s lined up at right back at least twice in her UVa career – and Hopkins is also quite active defensively.  The press is a newish wrinkle for the Cavaliers.

This is a young Louisville team – five freshmen started on the night – and overall I was impressed with the team’s on-ball skills, but they simply threw too many balls away.  Louisville owned possession with the second-half kickoff and it took them but 8 seconds to lose the ball out of bounds with an extremely wayward pass.  And with the subsequent throw-in, Virginia was again off the races.  Spaanstra was again rampaging all over Louisville’s back line and she had a couple of lovely feeds that first Ordonez and then Hopkins skied.  I love Hopkins’ game and what she brings to the team, especially after the loss of Rebecca Jarrett.  I can see how, if she were the featured center forward, and not having to learn how to play the wing, she would be an All-America selection.  It would be an exaggeration to compare some of her misses with those of Braxton Key, who had some shocking misses at the rim during his tenure, but man, Hopkins can miss some bunnies.  She fits in well with a fairly profligate Virginia team.

About 10 minutes in, the game started slowing down for Virginia and surprisingly, one of the culprits was Spaanstra.  I have watched this woman play a lot of games for Mr Jefferson’s university, and she is normally one of the least demonstrable players I’ve seen, rarely complaining about a call or talking to a ref.  But maybe that’s changing in her old age.  She was brought down at the end line and the ball seemingly went off the Louisville defender, but the ball was ruled a goal kick.  She argued with the linesman for maybe 5 – 6 seconds.  A couple minutes later she was back in the box where I think she mostly lost her own footing, but it looked like she, umm, embellished the fall as if she were trying to draw a penalty.  It was a good no call.

And then it was like a flip switched in her head and she decided that she had to score.  On one drive she took a shot that was so poor and wide that it went out of bounds for a throw in.  A minute later, at the top of the box, it looked like she tried to score off of a header.  It was uncharacteristic of her but it was emblematic of a Virginia team slowing down.

20 minutes into the second half, Louisville had one play where they simply carved up Virginia’s back line and were only saved by a very aggressive Laurel Ivory charging off her line.  Just as I was writing that “Virginia looking complacent” in my game notes, the game commentators used that exact same word to describe how the women were playing.

Five minutes later, with about 20 minutes left to play, Louisville got back into the game.  The Cardinals had been successful beating down Virginia’s right side, and this time it paid dividends.  Louisville’s Emma Hissock got the ball just at the corner of the box and delivered a beautiful looping cross to the awaiting Julia Simon who headed the ball home.  It’s difficult to envision just how open Simons was, so I’ll let you see the video.

Who else but Julia Simon⁉️

Cards 1, UVA 2

Watch @espn: https://t.co/LED8NGnj97#GoCards pic.twitter.com/12R6X02nJt

— Louisville Women's Soccer (@ULWomensSoccer) October 22, 2021

I don’t know who wasn’t paying attention there, whether it was Talia Staude or Laney Rouse, but it’s really hard to be that open in the middle of the penalty box.  The goal had maybe been 10 minutes in coming but suddenly, it was game on.

Except for Alexis Theoret.  Literally a minute later, Theoret corralled the ball outside the box, drove towards the center, and simply unleashed a lightning bolt into the top right corner.  As I’ve written several times, Virginia’s cardinal trait is that they do not give up.  Any bounce, any good feeling the Cardinals had acquired from the Simons goal was instantly evaporated.  Seven minutes later Taryn Torres would get into the act with a similarly gorgeous laser beam, and just to balance things out, she sent the ball into the top left of the Louisville goal.  I had queried myself “how would Virginia respond” to the Louisville goal and Torres and Theoret provided an emphatic answer.

HIGHLIGHTS | The Hoos pick up the 4-1 victory over Louisville on Thursday night with goals from Diana Ordoñez, Alexis Theoret and Taryn Torres.#GoHoos ?⚔️? | #ALLIN ⚽️? pic.twitter.com/0ognRAH5kV

— Virginia Women's Soccer (@UVAWomenSoccer) October 22, 2021

Injury Watch:  Samar Guidry did not play.  I tried scanning the team shots over the broadcast, but couldn’t pick her out.  While for the past six games Lizzie Sieracki has started ahead of Rouse, on this game Rouse was the primary outside back, playing most of the game.  It was Sieracki and Sarah Clark who split time at right back.  I think both ought to be ahead of Rouse at this point.

Brianna Jablonowski played this game and showed no overt signs of injury.

Up Next:  The Cavaliers travel to Miami on Sunday.  Miami is coming off an 8 – 0 shellacking at the hands of Clemson and are just playing out the string.  Miami is not a good program, but Virginia has struggled on their narrow pitch when they travel to Miami.  The Hurricanes won’t have this advantage on Sunday.   The game has been picked up by ACCNX and the game time has been moved back to 3:00pm.