Louisville lacrosse earns NCAA Tournament bid

For the third consecutive season, the Louisville women's lacrosse team is headed to the NCAA Tournament.

The Cards, who spent much of the season ranked in the nation's top five, will face Northwestern in a first round game in South Bend on Friday. The winner of that game will face Notre Dame, the tournament's No. 6 overall seed, on May 15.

Northwestern, a perennial powerhouse in the sport, has eliminated Louisville from each of the last two NCAA Tournaments, but the Cards notched their first win ever over the Wildcats earlier this season with a 10-4 victory. U of L split its two meetings with Notre Dame, winning 10-9 in the regular season but falling 12-10 in the quarterfinals of last week's ACC Tournament.

The full tournament bracket is here, and eight of the 26 teams that made the field are squads that the Cardinals have already faced at least once in 2016.

This is the year our long national Northwestern nightmare comes to an end. Darnell Autry was overrated.