Thursday evening Cardinal news and notes

—The fourth-ranked Louisville baseball team kicks off its 2019 season on Friday with a three-game series against nationally ranked Connecticut. Here’s a preview of the weekend.

—Chris Mack’s basement is pretty awesome.

—Some of the UMBC Twitter stuff has gotten a little tiresome over the last year, but this is gold.

—Rick Pitino is getting 16/1 odds to be the next head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. Of course so are Coach K and Jay Wright.

—Jay Bilas has Louisville at No. 21 in his 1-68 rankings.

21. Louisville Cardinals

What a gut punch against Duke. The Cardinals have been good this season, and Chris Mack has done a great job building Louisville back up his way. But to lose like the Cards did against Duke can shake belief. The best thing to do is look at the film, make corrections in an analytical fashion and move on. This team is good and is going to the NCAA tournament. Don’t let the Duke loss turn into a skid because it was deflating.

—Todd Grantham is turning down the Bengals to stay at Florida (a raise from the Gators helped ... the man knows how the game is played).

—The CJ’s Dominique Yates runs the full court press with U of L signee David Johnson.

—If you’d been thinking that we’ve been losing more 1-2 point games in the last two seasons than ever before, that wasn’t just a suspicious feeling.

—The Duke comeback even took Mike Krzyzewski by surprise.

—The Blue Devils appear to be more unkillable than ever.

—Denny Crum’s annual Potato Soup Lunch fundraiser is going down on Friday, March 1. More details here.

—To me, the best part of this GIF isn’t the intensity of the middle fingers, it’s her flipping the fury switch off and immediately getting back into cheering position.

Russ is a fan.

—Adam Zagoria says UCLA is going hard after Tony Bennett. As much as I would selfishly enjoy that, I would put a modest amount of money on Luke Walton coaching the Bruins this time next year.

—Last night in the ACC:

No. 17 Florida State 88, Wake Forest 66
No. 22 Virginia Tech 76, Georgia Tech 68
Miami 65, Clemson 64
NC State 73, Syracuse 58

No scheduled games in the league tonight.

—Scott Satterfield was mic’d up for Louisville’s first spring practice.

—Cards fans in South Florida, there will be a game watch Saturday at Stout, located in the Oakwood Plaza off of I-95 at 3419 N. Andrews Ave. in Oakland Park.

—Check out the latest edition of the U of L women’s basketball newsletter.

—Malik Cunningham met with the media after practice on Wednesday and gave some pretty telling quotes both on his belief that he fits this new system perfectly and on the prior staff.

“It’s a big difference. Coach Satterfield is bringing nothing but positivity to the program and around here and we love it here… It’s nothing but fun, it’s different – we all just love being here, it hasn’t been like that in a long time.”

“It’s kind of similar to what I ran in high school so it’s a lot easier for me. This scheme fits me perfect, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here.”

“I love Coach Ponce. He’s a very good coach, I did my research on him and he knows what he’s talking about and he’s going to get us right. I talked to Zac (Appalachian State QB Zac Thomas) and coach is always dialed in on the little things, which is something the previous coaches didn’t do with us, we go over the same things every day, nothing is going to change.”

—Former U of L assistant Wyking Jones might be the head coach of the worst power conference team in the history of college basketball.

—Louisville football had an absolutely loaded list of visitors Tuesday night at the KFC Yum Center.

—The U of L softball team is hitting the road for the ACC-Big 10 Challenge.

—There are now Duke t-shirts commemorating the “Louisville Heist.”

—Steven and Jordan like dunking.

—The Winston Salem Journal looks at all the App State combinations on the new Louisville football staff.

—A fundraiser for the annual “Run for Ryann” event is going down on Tuesday, Feb. 26 at the O’Shea’s on Baxter. You can find more details here.

—And finally, happy Valentine’s Day, kids.