Friday afternoon Cardinal news and notes

—The first result of the 2021-22 U of L athletics season is a 6-2 drubbing of Western Michigan by the women’s soccer team.

—Halfway through his first fall camp, true freshman safety Bralyn Oliver has entered the transfer portal. Oliver, a three-star recruit coming out of high school in South Carolina, enrolled at U of L in January.

—The incomparable Sean Moth was kind of enough to join me in studio on yesterday’s Mike Rutherford show. You can listen to the podcast here or here or pretty much anywhere else you can listen to podcasts.

—These videos never, ever get old.

Congrats to Ramon.

—Six Kentucky football players have been charged with first-degree burglary stemming from a March(!) incident at a house near the UK campus. Additionally, Vito Tisdale has been charged with wanton endangerment for allegedly pointing a gun at one of the victims.

Program in chaos imo.

—Four U of L volleyball players have landed on the preseason All-ACC squad.

—Louisville Report takes a stab at breaking down the backcourt for the U of L men’s basketball team.

Finally, we have Noah Locke. Louisville struggled to shoot the ball through much of the 2020-21 season, and Locke is the Cardinals’ biggest remedy for this issue. He was Florida’s top three-point scorer with a team-best 57 threes and 40.4 three-point shooting percentage as a junior, a 43.2 three-point shooting mark as a sophomore, and a Florida freshman record 81 connected triples.

While there will be some jockeying for the starting point guard spot for the aforementioned three players, Locke is your set-in-stone day one starter at shooting guard. But like Ellis, he has also stated that he wanted to play more on the ball than his time at Florida. In high school, he was known as a combo guard, whereas the Gators used him almost exclusively as a spot up shooter.

With two primary point guards, and two combo guards who want to play more on the ball in 2021-22, it will be interesting to see how Chris Mack determines who will be the ball handler in what situations. This will certainly be something to monitor as the preseason and season itself progresses.

—The NCAA has suspended Buzz Williams for two games and imposed some small recruiting restrictions on Texas A&M for holding unsanctioned workouts as well as some minor recruiting violations.

—Gunter Brewer is excited about his new crop of wide receivers.

—U of L women’s basketball signee Alexia Mobley will enroll early at Louisville and redshirt the 2021-22 season.

—There’s a “Kickoff Concert” for U of L students tonight at Cardinal Stadium.

—Three Ballard football players chose to take the state of Kentucky up on its offer of playing a “redshirt senior” season of high school ball.

—Major League Baseball has ended its 70-year relationship with trading card company Topps.

—Tickets remain available for tomorrow night’s Women’s Cup final between Racing Louisville and Bayern Munich.

—The Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC are expected to make a formal announcement about an alliance soon, perhaps as early as next week (Athletic link).

Schools within the three conferences believe they are like-minded, that they want to continue to prioritize broad-based sports offerings and that the academic profile of their institutions matters — as does graduating athletes. For example, Big Ten schools sponsor an average of 24.8 sports per campus, with the ACC (23.8) and Pac-12 (22.9) not far behind. SEC schools offer an average of 19.9 sports.

Why these three conferences?

Nicole Auerbach, college football senior writer: As much fun as it is to theorize about future nonconference games between Clemson, Ohio State and Oregon, that isn’t necessarily all a potential Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC alliance is about.

The Alliance — which really needs to be the official name of this, with capitalization, please — goes far beyond the concepts of scheduling and television inventory.

There are many administrators in the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC who believe in the collegiate model and want it to continue; even those who have enthusiastically embraced name, image and likeness reform don’t want to see college football become an actual minor league system for the NFL with a draft, player salaries and the like. They worry that the SEC’s aggression could lead to something like that.

So, where does that leave the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC and their schools? That’s the (multi-)million-dollar question.

—Props to the KCD boys soccer team for knocking off St. X for the first time in 40 years last night.

—Former Kentucky QB Joey Gatewood is reportedly transferring to Central Florida, which means he may get his shot at Louisville earlier than expected this fall.

—An arrest has finally been made in the 2006 murder of Miami football player Bryan Pata.

—The ACC has announced its forfeiture policy for the 2021 football season.

According to the league, if a conference game is unable to be played on its originally scheduled date due to an “insufficient number of available players related to COVID-19” by a team, then that team will forfeit and assigned a loss in conference standings. The opponent will also be assigned a victory in conference standings, and the game with not be rescheduled.

If both teams are unable to play a conference game due to an insufficient numbers of players due to COVID-19, both teams will be given a forfeit and loss in conference standings. The ACC did not offer a specific threshold when it comes to identifying the “insufficient number of available players”.

—Here’s a video preview of the back end of the Ole Miss defense.

—Louisville tourism officials are estimating more than $3 million worth of revenue will come from this weekend’s Women’s Cup.

—Bleacher Report makes the bold prediction that Shai Werts will be Louisville’s MVP this season.

—And finally, enjoy you’re weekend, kids. Just two left until football.