Wednesday afternoon Cardinal news and notes

—The U of L baseball team will play its first midweek contest of the young season tonight when it hosts Xavier. Here’s a preview.

—Louisville is up one spot from No. 5 to No. 4 in the latest Baseball America top 25 poll.

—The latest U of L women’s basketball Bracketology from ESPN has Louisville as a 7-seed taking on Washington State in the first round.

—Brandon Marcello of 247 Sports writes that Cincinnati was one of the biggest losers of the most recent college football coaching carousel, and that Louisville was one of the biggest winners.

Louisville

Louisville fans didn’t have to pack Scott Satterfield’s bags, after all. Fans have been smothering Satterfield for his lack of big wins over the last two seasons and were openly wondering late in 2021 if he should be fired. One year later, they got their wish and it didn’t cost the school a dime. Satterfield instead left for Cincinnati and Louisville hired their favorite son, former Louisville quarterback Jeff Brohm.

Ask even the most cynical Cardinals fan and they’ll tell you this is an upgrade – and at a darn good discount. Brohm isn’t just a Louisville man, he’s an incredibly successful coach.

Brohm led Purdue to a Big Ten Championship appearance last season and also pushed the Boilermakers into four bowl games in six seasons, including the Citrus Bowl. Louisville fans watched him up close — and certainly wished loudly that he would step in as head coach — when he led Western Kentucky to a pair of Conference USA titles and had 22 combined wins in his final two seasons leading the Hilltoppers in 2015 and 2016.

No team in this hiring cycle received a better deal and a bigger upgrade, and also expertly play fan service, than Louisville. Get ready for some points, Cardinals.

—The ACC Digital Network liked El Ellis’ exclamation point dunk from Saturday so much that they named it the best play of the week (video).

—The Cardinal lacrosse team is up two spots to No. 23 this week.

—We might be historically bad at everything else, but we are historically good from the free-throw line.

—The folks over at Duke Basketball Report are excited about the way the Devils played against Louisville.

—Malik Cunningham was selected 22nd overall by the Birmingham Stallions in the USFL Draft, which gives him options for his future.

—Ron English seems to be happy to be back in The Ville.

—The recruitment of Lyon County star Travis Perry has been heating up in recent weeks, but it doesn’t appear as though Louisville is in the mix.

—The 10th annual raiseRED fundraiser is going down this Friday.

—Kei’Trel Clark is the guest on the latest episode of the From the Pink Seats podcast.

—Opening weekend at Jim Patterson was a success.

—The Cards have some competition for Churchill Abass.

—Rick Bozich writes about the celebratory evening inside the KFC Yum Center Saturday night.

—Kenny Payne says his team was intimidated at times by the atmosphere inside Cameron Indoor on Monday night.

“At times, it looks like the environment intimidated us. Not acceptable,” Payne said after their loss to the Blue Devils. “We tried to explain to them what kind of environment this is. We have a coach on the staff, Nolan (Smith), who played here, coached here, went through everything that this program is and what it means to be here, and how they were gonna come out and play against us. Something didn’t click.

“We as coaches, me personally, I’ll take the blame for that. I couldn’t get them to play the way they needed to play with the fight that we needed to get a win.”

—David Evans of Basketball Insiders says Louisville “appears to be in the lead” for 5-star class of 2024 talent Trentyn Flowers.

—The latest Starting Five02 podcast episode wonders if Kenny Payne has started adopting a Ted Lasso mentality.

—Don is the coolest.

—U of L has offered Maryland grad transfer OL Mason Lunsford.

—The Louisville field hockey team led all Division I schools while earning the 2022 National Field Hockey Coaches Association Division I National Academic Team Award. U of L’s Aimee Plumb was named the National Scholar Athlete of the Year.

—Some fresh highlights of Cardinal hoops commit TJ Robinson:

—The Brandon Miller situation at Alabama is insane, and Nate Oats could not have handled it worse yesterday.

—U of L track and field is set to host the ACC Indoor Championships.

—”Easily” seems misplaced here, but it’d certainly be cool to see it happen.

—Big Red Louie highlights five Louisville baseball players who were instrumental in U of L’s sweep of Bucknell.

—The Duke Basketball Report podcast discusses the Blue Devils’ win over Louisville.

—Jeff Brohm is looking to continue Louisville’s recent success with walk-ons.

—Norika is the best.

—Some record-breaking warm temperatures are expected in Louisville for the rest of February.

—Thuner Over Louisville at Lynn Family Stadium is returning this spring.

—Here’s what Jon Scheyer had to say about Duke’s triumph over the Cards.

—C.J. Avery is already making plays in the XFL.

—Trumaine Washington, Shaq Wiggins, Josh Harvey-Clemons, Eli Rogers and Dontez Byrd are also playing in the league.

—CBS tackles the topic of Rick Pitino’s next move, which I would bet a large amount of money that I don’t have is to a power conference program for next season.

—And finally, the Rutherford Show is back this afternoon from 3-6 on 1450/96.1. You can stream it here.