The month of August has arrived and we are staring down the start of a new sports season for our beloved Cardinals. Fall football camp will start on August 6th and the basketball team has a big trip to Puerto Rico August 11th through 16th where they will play 9 games in 6 days. As we look towards another exciting year I will take a moment to look back and reflect on some special moments that will surely live forever in the memories of Cardinal fans. Here are The Beak’s Top 5 Moments of the 2014-15 Louisville Sports season:
#5 Cardinal Baseball has Arrived
Since its inception in 1909, the Louisville baseball program had been a 96-year see-saw session in which the Cardinals would contend for a few conference titles and fifth-place finishes with equal frequency. That all changed when Dan McDonnell took over as coach in 2007 and he has built Louisville into a consistent winner that now must be considered among the nation’s top powers. The month of June in Louisville has now become a yearly celebration of the Cardinal Nine. They rolled through their first season in a very competitive ACC winning 25 of their 30 regular season conference games, setting a conference record on the way to a 43-16 overall record and winning the ACC regular season Title. This past June the Cardinals hosted a College World Series regional for the third year in a row, the fifth time in program history. To add to that they were selected as a No. 3 seed in the tournament, marking only the second time the baseball team has been ranked in program history. I have really enjoyed watching this program elevate and being at Jim Patterson stadium during the regionals you could tell that Cardinal Fans have embraced the baseball program. We didn’t make it to the College World Series but just being able to make another great run was special and a top 5 moment for sure.
#4 Cards officially join the ACC
Last summer there was a lot of buzz in the air and the excitement was at an all-time high as the Cardinals were officially added to one of the premier conferences in the country. We had watched our sports teams be journeymen for years bouncing from one conference to the next and had to even endure a season in the makeshift AAC. Finally we would get the chance to be in a conference rooted as deep in their traditions as we were ours. The atmosphere was incredible at the ACC Celebration and 4th street live was filled with Cardinal Pride. It was great to be a part of that transformational moment and definitely a top 5 moment.
#3 The Cardinals Touchdown in the ACC
All that anticipation that had built up through the summer came to a head on September 2nd of last year when the Cardinals Football team took the field for the first time in ACC competition. The blacked out crowd, the pageantry, and the emotion that night was just incredible. Out of all of the sports programs at the University of Louisville I think that football will benefit the most from the move to the ACC and in their debut they did not disappoint taking down Miami. When the Cardinals scored that first ACC touchdown it made it official and after a long journey from very humble beginnings made that a top 5 moment for sure.
#2 MANGO for the Win
The 2014-15 Cardinals basketball team faced a lot of adversity on and off the court last season. They battled through that adversity, took their lumps and headed into the post season with a new found energy after beating the then #2 team in the country Virginia on senior day. I love big moments especially when it’s a big moment from guys who typically are in the background. That was the case on Senior Day. I don’t think anyone in the Yum Center expected Mango to do much that day and he had been criticized by the fans for most of the season for his lack of production. But as the seconds wound off the clock he would hit the biggest shot of the regular season. Mango pretty much epitomized what that team was about. He had his struggles with many ups and downs but continued to work and practice hard and that day it paid off. It was a great game and the Yum Center was as loud as I’ve heard it. A moment worthy of the top 5.
#1 A Golden moment a Golden Dome
There are several sports venues in the country that make it onto every avid fans bucket list. Ever since watching the movie Rudy I had wanted to make the trip to South Bend to watch a game. I finally got that opportunity last season. When I arrived on the campus of Notre Dame I took in all of the great sights and sounds. It was The Golden Dome, the Grotto, and Touchdown Jesus. The whole day leading up to the game was incredible and that whole place just oozes history. Then was the pre-game pageantry in Notre Dame Stadium. From the band taking the field to the raising of the American flag it was all pretty great. And seeing my Cardinals come out of that legendary tunnel and take that field sent cold chills down my spine. I was just so happy to be in that moment and to have had the experience up to that point and we hadn’t even played the game yet. There are program defining moments and going into Notre Dame Stadium for the first time on their senior day and getting a win is program defining. Cardinal Nation had a lot of great moments last year but this one had to be the best.
I hope you enjoyed taking this little trip down memory lane and I hope that it helped you relive some of those great times from last year. As we head into a new one I’m excited and very optimistic that there will be just as many of those moments ahead. Go Cards!