Monday evening Cardinal news and notes

—NET Rankings Update: No. 51 (down one from Saturday).

—The U of L baseball team dropped two of three at Georgia Tech over the weekend.

—Jeff Greer has a Championship Week primer for Louisville fans.

What Louisville fans should root for

Beat Duke and your team is almost certainly dancing.

Beyond that, you want Duke to win Tuesday. Notre Dame making a little noise could help Louisville’s home win over the Irish move to Quadrant 2 status. Oh, and keep rooting for Josh Pastner and Georgia Tech. If the Jackets beat Clemson and someone else solid in the semifinals, Louisville’s home win vs. Georgia Tech could end up as a Quadrant 1 win. Could late movement on the resume help the Cards? I’d imagine the committee debates bubble teams right down to the wire on Saturday and into Sunday, so … maybe.

What Louisville fans should root against

At this point, losing. A loss to Duke this week might end up as a Quadrant 1 loss if Duke improves its NET rating, but that might not matter as much as Louisville running out of opportunities to improve its profile. That is what this week is all about: Stay alive and keep bolstering the resume. You never want to be the team hoping someone else helps you out.

—The 13th-ranked Louisville volleyball team got back into ACC play with a sweep of Wake Forest.

—One pandemic year later, the ACC tournament is returning to Greensboro.

—The hope that Virginia Tech might have to pull out of the ACC tournament, leading to a more favorable draw for Louisville has been put to bed.

—It’s a safe bet that the biggest winners from inevitable NIL legislation won’t be just the household names, and women, in particular, will have a big share of the pie.

—Dana Evans is on the national ballot for the Wooden Award.

—The U of L men’s tennis team fell to Duke on Sunday.

—BetOnline has Louisville at 10/1 to win the ACC tournament.

—Cool read here on how Bellarmine found a way to honor its 2011 national championship team on national TV.

—Jerry Palm of CBS still has Louisville as a 10-seed.

—The Sporting News has Louisville as an 11-seed.

—It was pretty apparent if you caught the closing seconds or the postgame press conference, but Dana Evans took Sunday’s loss awfully hard.

Thankfully, and expectedly, her teammates have her back.

—Louisville baseball drops from No. 5 to No. 10 in the latest D1baseball.com poll.

—Baseball America drops the Cards to No. 15.

—Tick Rodgers is the guest on the latest episode of Larry O’Bannon’s podcast.

—The Hailey Van Lith hype train is about to be out of control.

—Louisville is No. 9 in the latest women’s basketball power rankings from The Athletic.

—The NCAA has announced that fans can purchase photo cutouts that will be placed in San Antonio’s Alamodome at the women’s Final Four, with all proceeds going to three charities: the Pat Summitt Foundation, the Kay Yow Cancer Fund and the San Antonio Food Bank.

—Former U of L assistant Garrick McGee is the new quarterbacks coach at Florida.

—I don’t care that his name isn’t actually “Juice Manpower,” he is Juice Manpower. If he plays here, “Manpower” will be the name across the back of his Cardinal uniform.

—In one weekend, Donovan Mitchell clapped back at LeBron James and became the first former Louisville player to score in double figures in the NBA All-Star Game.

—For the first time in 10 years, Morehead State is headed to the NCAA tournament. Zero clue what happened the last time they danced.

—The 25th-ranked U of L lacrosse team took a tough 13-12 loss to Virginia on Sunday.

—Louisville-Duke on Wednesday could be one of the showcase pre-weekend games of Championship Week says Pat Forde.

ACC

When: Tuesday through Saturday.

Top seed: Virginia (13). The Cavaliers (17–6, 13–4) are a notch beneath their customary defensive standards, but a closing-two game winning streak combined with Florida State losing two of its last three opened the door for a third regular-season title in the last four seasons.

Top threat to the top seed: The Seminoles certainly spring to mind, but don’t overlook Georgia Tech. The veteran Yellow Jackets (15–8, 11–6) ramped up their level of play in mid-February and arrive in Greensboro on a six-game winning streak. The hurdle here: Josh Pastner has never won an ACC tournament game.

Tourney teams: Virginia, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Clemson, Louisville.

Bubble: Syracuse, North Carolina State and Duke. The Orange and Wolfpack meet at noon Wednesday in a bubble elimination game. Syracuse might be in with one win, while NC State and Duke will need multiple wins just to get into the discussion.

Best early-round matchup: A potential Duke-Louisville 7–10 game Wednesday would be of high interest. The Blue Devils need wins to get into serious bubble consideration, and Louisville might be feeling a thing of anxiety itself after closing the regular season 4–5. But two of those wins are over Duke.

Forde goes on to pick the Fighting Josh Pastners to win the tournament.

—Here’s everything Jeff Walz had to say after Louisville’s heartbreaking loss on Sunday.

—Creighton has reinstated head coach Greg McDermott.

—New heat from Homefield Apparel:

Use the promo code “CARDCHRONICLE” at checkout for 20% off your first purchase from Homefield.

—The latest Cardinal Sports Zone podcast is here.

—If Duke beats Boston College on Tuesday and the “hard to beat team three times in the same season” takes start flying ...

—A Conference USA tournament game has been forfeited due to a positive Covid test. That makes three league tournament games so far that have been canceled.

—The Louisville softball team went 3-1 in the Cardinal Classic over the weekend.

—And finally, no unranked team has won the ACC tournament since 2004, but David Teel writes that anarchy has an opportunity to prevail in Greensboro this week.