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Tuesday morning Cardinal news and notes

Rob and Lettie Johnson have been in Pittsburgh, waiting for this moment since July. It's called dedication.

By Mike Rutherford

I_medium Spread check (football): Pitt by 2.5.

I_medium The Louisville women's basketball team dropped a 75-71 decision to Cal in their season-opener on Sunday, but they also drew 16,254 fans to the KFC Yum Center. For the sake of comparison, South Carolina led the country in home attendance last season with an average of 12,293.

U of L fell eight spots from No. 8 to No. 16 in the latest AP poll.

I_medium Be sure to vote for the Red Rage Tailgate's David Magee in this national tailgating contest.

I_medium Speaking of the RRT....

Glorious.

I_medium The Louisville field hockey team wrapped its 2015 season with a 3-0 loss to No. 3 Connecticut in the NCAA Tournament.

I_medium LMPD is still looking for a south Louisville 10-year-old who was last seen wearing a Baltimore Ravens jersey.

I_medium Andrea Adelson writes about Trumaine Washington's big impact.

I_medium Here's a taste of what Preston Brown wired for sound is like:

I_medium Former U of L golfer Derek Fathauer finished fourth at the PGA Tour's OHL Classic over the weekend, his best career PGA finish.

I_medium This column from Insider Louisville wasn't written by Stevie Johnson, but it sort of sounds like it was.

Last year, Kentucky had the No. 1 team because we deserved it. We had the most dominant team and the most likable team. The championship was ours. To lose it on the petty technicality of not scoring as many points as the other team felt worse than immoral. It felt unfair.

Unfair. There's a reason we speak so childishly when we talk about basketball. It turns us into children. Like children, we don't think of the world's unfairness when it's unfair in our favor (Eight pros on one team? That doesn't seem fair.) only when it goes against us (How could the refs have missed that shot-clock violation? What were they looking at?). The sum total of all that give and take is watching Coach Kryzewski, looking like Richard Gere's gerbil in Adolf Hitler's toupee, cutting down the nets with a smirk. Kentucky fans hear Duke "did it the right way" and their players "played with class." Our enemies, the winners, are writing the history. We are left to feel it.

God, yourself, and the Kentucky Wildcats. When Kentucky lost, I wasn't angry with Wisconsin — I was angry with God. How could he show us a perfect season and then snatch it away? What had I done to anger him aside from repeatedly and unrepentantly breaking all his commandments? I watched the game drunk while coveting my neighbor's graven images, but when the final horn sounded, I felt like Job, the world's most righteous man punished by a capricious God for the sin of faith. If this seems ridiculous to you, then I can only congratulate you on having never met a Kentucky fan before.

I_medium An underdog as recently as a month ago, Louisville is now being listed in Vegas as a 9.5-point favorite over Kentucky. Bit first, beat Pitt ... as an underdog.

I_medium Pretty cool to see two former Cards featured in this cover art from last week:

I_medium Send some positive vibes in the direction of Jamon Brown, who will miss the rest of his rookie season with the Rams after suffering a broken leg on Sunday.

I_medium So a dude in Cleveland bought a storage locker for $425 and then found out it used to belong to Samardo Samuels.

Jeff Noble regularly goes to auctions to look for inventory for his store, the Second Chance Thrift Shop in Mentor-on-the-Lake.  Last Thursday, he outbid seven other people for a storage locker, thinking he could sell the king size bed and other furniture in it.  He soon found out he bought the abandoned locker of Samardo Samuels, who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers a couple of years ago.

"I started seeing brand new tennis shoes, lots of them.  It ends up being over 25 pairs brand new size 15, 16 Nike shoes.   And then I saw some jerseys. It was Samardo Samuels. There were some Cavs playbooks, Cavs team policy manual.  As, we dug a little further we found some paychecks."

Noble intends to sell the items in his store and on Ebay.  He expects to make much more than the $425 dollars he spent on the storage locker.

I_medium Tony Bennett's 6th-ranked Virginia squad fell at George Washington Monday night. The loss was the Hoos' first to the Colonials since 1974.

I_medium The Louisville volleyball team took down No. 20 Florida State over the weekend and moved up to No. 17 in the latest national rankings.

I_medium A handful of local attorneys believe Katina Powell talking to the NCAA is an error in judgment on the part of her attorney.

Defense attorney Ryan Vantrease said he has one "cardinal rule" when representing someone who is under investigation.

"Don't talk to anybody," Vantrease, a former prosecutor, said in an interview.

"You don't want to unnecessarily provide them with any self-incriminating evidence."

So, Vantrease, among other local defense attorneys, was caught by surprise when the lawyer for Katina Powell, the self-described former escort, said she would speak with the NCAA about allegations involving sex with UofL recruits and players - arguing she has nothing to lose.

"There is no reason for her not to talk to the NCAA now and meet with the NCAA now and that's gonna happen very soon," attorney Larry Wilder told WDRB last week. "And the NCAA will have the full and absolute complete benefit of all the information and all the documentation; all the cell phones and all the journals that the Commonwealth's Attorney now's going to get through a subpoena."

But Vantrease and other defense attorneys argue there is at least one good reason for Powell not to talk to the NCAA.

"He says she has nothing to lose; Hell yeah, she does," said Louisville defense attorney Paul Gold. "She can get indicted for something."

I_medium Mark's been doing this long enough to know that this isn't going to stop them.

I_medium I enjoyed this tweet.

I_medium Bobby Petrino praises the maturity displayed by all of his quarterbacks this season.

I_medium Your buzzer-beater of the night is LIU over Loyola:

I_medium For the first time in a decade, the Louisville men's soccer team is not a part of the NCAA Tournament field.

I_medium Louisville volleyball's Molly Sauer was named ACC Freshman of the Week on Monday for the second time this season.

I_medium You said it, Tyler.

Also, people don't forget:

I_medium Cardiac Hill (Pitt) takes a first glance at Louisville.

I_medium Inside the ACC previews the 2015-16 hoops season.

I_medium Stephan Van Treese: getting bigger in Japan every second.

I_medium John Clay of the Lexington Herald-Leader writes about Kyle Bolin.

I_medium And finally, beat Hartford.

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