A highly scientific look at Louisville's first year in the ACC

The following is an exhaustive, highly scientific statistical look at Louisville's recently concluded debut season in the ACC. Please do not attempt to question or fact check any of the data below because, as previously mentioned, it is highly scientific and exhaustive.

1 point for the opening of Lynn Stadium, the nicest college soccer venue in the country. Also, 2 bonus points for an opening night in which the women's team took down Ole Miss, 1-0, and the men's team upset second-ranked Maryland by the same score.

31 points for an equally pristine opener to the 2014 football season, where a record crowd of 55,428 Cardinal fans dressed in black watched as Bobby Petrino's guys stomped Miami in front of a national television audience on Labor Day.

3 points to the Clemson football fans, whose hospitality made the bucket list trip to Death Valley a worthwhile endeavor despite a gut-wrenching Louisville loss.

28 points to the Notre Dame football team, for making the second bucket list trip of the season a more celebratory occasion.

6 points to the Louisville field hockey team, which knocked off No. 1 North Carolina at home in September, and spent the bulk of its 2014 campaign ranked somewhere in the nation's top 10.

3 points to Tanja Kylliainen for becoming UofL's first ACC champion. The senior swimmer earned the honor by winning the 200 individual medley at the ACC Women's Championship. Kylliainen wound up winning three gold medals at the meet (200 im, 400 im, 200 fly), she set three conference records, and was named the ACC's Most Valuable Swimmer.

9 points for a 9-3 Louisville football team landing in a bowl game against a Georgia team that entered the postseason ranked No. 13. This just one year after an 11-1 Cardinal team whose only loss came at the hands of another once-beaten squad, was relegated to a bowl game against an unranked Miami squad.

1 point to men's tennis star Sebastian Stiefelmeyer, who became the first Cardinal to win the ITA All-American Singles Championship in the fall, and then entered the 2015 dual match season as the top-ranked singles player in the country.

14 points to safety Gerod Holliman, who tied an NCAA record set in 1968 by intercepting 14 passes in a single season. The last of those 14 picks sealed up the Cardinals' 44-40 win over Kentucky. Holliman went on to win the Jim Thorpe Award and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers.

300 points to Kelsi Worrell, the 2015 NCAA Champion in the 100 and 200 butterfly, who set the American and NCAA record in the 100 butterfly. Worrell was named the ACC Swimmer of the Year as the champion in the 100 butterfly and 100 freestyle, setting ACC records in both events at the ACC women's swimming and diving championships.

12 points to the men's basketball team for finishing in the top four of the ACC and crashing the Elite Eight for the third time in four years.

27 points to the women's basketball team, which surprised everyone by winning 27 games and finishing third in the ACC despite losing superstar Shoni Schimmel to graduation.

10 points for the 10 Cardinals selected in the 2015 NFL Draft, the most in the history of the program and the second-most of any team in the country.

2 points to Mangok Mathiang for hitting the most memorable (and surprising) game-winner in recent memory when the Cards took down second-ranked Virginia on Senior Day.

25 points to Dan McDonnell and the Louisville baseball team, which stunned the ACC by setting a conference record for league wins with 25.

3 points for the No. 3 overall seed the Cardinal Nine earned in the NCAA Tournament, and a bonus point for the awful home run call that helped end their season a week too soon.

1,031 points for everyone else associated with UofL athletics. You all more than held your own in your debut season in a "Power 5" conference, and you all deserve those points.

Final Total: 1,508

Scientific research doesn't lie. Pretty solid season.

The previous column appears in this week's issue of The Voice-Tribune