Friday afternoon Cardinal news and notes

—Spread check: Louisville by 3.

—College Football News is going with a 24-20 Louisville win over Virginia.

—Streaking the Lawn says that Virginia fans’ expectations for the rest of the season have hit a low. Should be quite the tussle in Charlottesville tomorrow afternoon.

—Eric Crawford says his understanding is that Scott Satterfield’s future at Louisville isn’t as cut and dry as the Adam Rittenberg report made it out to be.

—The local high school football crew make their picks for a loaded Friday night of action around these parts.

—Tonight’s showdown between No. 1 St. John Bosco vs. No. 2 Mater Dei features four Louisville commits and 70 (70!) players with at least one FBS offer.

—Matt McGavic of Louisville Report is taking the Cards over the Cavs by a field goal.

—Norika Konno churning out highlights at the FIBA 3-on-3 world championships.

—In addition to Malik Cunningham’s questionable status, Louisville may only have two of its five scholarship running backs available for Saturday’s game against Virginia.

—The 11th-ranked Louisville men’s soccer team heads to South Bend this weekend for a Saturday night match against Notre Dame. Here’s a preview.

—Jeff Greer’s latest U of L hoops newsletter focuses on the Cards’ learning, not rebuilding, year ahead.

“We are not a team that has a bunch of wiggle room,” Payne said. “We’re a team that, every single day, we have to do it with fight and love and togetherness, and it started back in the summer. I hate to say it like this, but I am more intrigued with the process than I am with the Ws and Ls. For me, it’s about winning or learning and nothing else.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, but again, let’s take “wiggle room” first for 800, please. This is absolutely correct, and a good acknowledgment by Payne of where his team is. Louisville is like those and/or equations from school: Louisville will be good if … El Ellis is awesome and plays 35 minutes a game and Jae’Lyn Withers is the creative playmaker he was expected to be out of high school and Sydney Curry becomes a double-double candidate every night and Kamari Lands is as good as advertised.

That’s a lot of ands. If you get all four, Louisville … might be solid? If you get three of those, OK. If you get two of ‘em, good luck.

Which is all to say Payne knows he has to find a way, with its 10 scholarship guys, to maximize the potential of each of them. Not potential in terms of their careers or long-term goals — just potential in terms of this season. For example, Roosevelt Wheeler looks like a player who could develop into a 12-and-7 kinda guy in the ACC, but this season, Wheeler needs to be an energy big off the bench who gets you, what, 10-15 minutes? Then, U of L has to replicate matching that potential 10 times over, from the expected stars in Ellis and Curry to the newcomers. And even if all that happens, there is still reason to wonder if there’s enough there to be an NCAA Tournament team.

The part about the process is an important segment, too, because Louisville is going to have a learning year. Not rebuilding. Learning. You have a first-year coach, a group of six returning players from a team that really struggled and four newcomers. He has surely spent a ton of time over the years thinking about how he wanted to approach this job, but Payne also will have (and surely already has had) unplanned things come up through the course of his work that require in-the-moment reactions. All that adds up to one big learning experience. Same goes for the group. That Payne has set that expectation in the preseason is probably a very smart move.

—It’s match day for the second-ranked Louisville volleyball team, which is taking on Boston College in Chestnut Hill. The Cards will then face Syracuse on Sunday. Here’s a preview of the weekend ahead in the Northeast.

—Bill Connelly of ESPN previews (insider) the college football weekend ahead.

—A new Card Chronicle Podcast episode dropped this morning.

—This is hilarious.

—Despite this current rough patch for Cardinal football, former QB Chris Redman is confident the program will be back.

—Louisville Report looks at the biggest storylines heading into this weekend’s Louisville-Virginia game.

—Former Louisville offensive coordinator Shawn Watson has been named the interim head coach at Wofford.

—All the more reason to buy tickets for Louisville Live.

—The U of L women’s soccer team fell to 1-4 in ACC play with a 2-1 home loss to Clemson Thursday night.

—On3’s latest team football recruiting rankings for 2023 have Louisville’s class at No. 17.

—Kenny Payne has offered 4-star shooting guard Jerry Easter from the class of 2025.

—Peyton is still the man.

—Mel Kiper said this week that as of now, he’s projecting Kentucky QB Will Levis to be the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL draft.

—Montrezl Harrell hit the game-winner in his first exhibition contest as a 76er.

—After a disappointing sophomore season, Jae’Lyn Withers is ready to show off his perimeter skills.

“I would say what I have been working on the most is getting back comfortable on the perimeter,” Withers said. “That’s my natural position.

“So far this season, that’s all I have been doing is working on everything out there. Whether that’s ballhandling, knocking down more threes, or doing more things off the dribble. Just trying to work on getting myself back to being comfortable with everything on the perimeter.”

Withers said he had a good chat with Payne when he was hired last season, and then was able to spend some time at home with his family as he rehabbed the knee injury and started working on improvements in his game. Withers said his father, Curtis, told him to “hear him out” and once he chatted with Payne it was an easy decision.

“(Payne said) something that I have heard rarely from different people, he said, ‘I want to make you pro’ and ‘I am going to get you there,” Withers said. “And so far it has been a lot of very difficult training. I would say he’s getting me closer, step-by-step, day-by-day. I would say moving forward Kenny Payne is definitely a great start for me.”

—Eric Crawford shares his thoughts on Racing Louisville, failure all around, and heroes in dark places.

—A chess cheating scandal that has been making national headlines for weeks has reached the point of butt scanning.

—Get to know El Ellis a little better.

—Wake Forest is “all grown up” under the leadership of Dave Clawson.

—Victor Wembanyama vs. Scoot Henderson, a battle of the likely top two picks in the 2023 NBA draft, more than lived up to the hype.

—Changes are coming to this year’s Louisville Basketball Tip-Off, formerly known as the tip-off luncheon.

—I disagree.

Also the formatting on that graphic is confusing and bad.

—The 2023 ACC baseball tournament is headed back to Durham.

—The CJ ranks the 20 best players in the state of Kentucky for the upcoming girls basketball season.

—Two of these three ACC power rankings from the ACC Network staff have Louisville in dead last.

—Rick Bozich isn’t sure that any of the changes Scott Satterfield is implementing this week are going to matter in the grand scheme of things.

—The Field of 68 is counting down the 25 best college basketball teams since 2000 and has the 2021-13 Louisville team at No. 24.

I know I’m biased, but even trying to look at this objectively, 24 feels at least 8-12 spots too low.

—Big Red Louie discusses Louisville’s latest coaching conundrum.

—Cavaliers Now predicts a 27-24 UVA win tomorrow afternoon.

—Friday Irrelevance, double helping:

—The latest episode of the Cardinal Sports Zone podcast is here.

—Allowing explosive plays on defense and an inability to create explosive plays on offense have defined Louisville’s season so far.

—This awful story just keeps getting worse.

—Here’s Streaking the Lawn’s official preview of tomorrow’s game.

—Here are five players to watch for tomorrow in Charlottesville.

—This seems cool.

—If Malik Cunningham isn’t able to go tomorrow afternoon, Lance Taylor has confidence in Brock Domann’s ability to get the job done.

—The Mike Rutherford Show is wrapping up the week this afternoon from 3-6 on 1450/96.1 The Big X. You can stream the show here.

—And finally, beat Virginia.