– Soccer’s version of the Blue and Red rivalry

Friday night UofL and UK soccer took center stage in front of the second largest crowd to ever watch a match in Cardinal Park. There was a buzz in the air as these teams took the field for their version of “The Battle of the Bluegrass”. On this night it was the guys in blue who would win the battle.

Despite finishing the game with a 11-5 shot advantage and a corner kick advantage of 9-2 the Cards couldn’t find the back of the net. UK played solid defense throughout the match coming up with answers every time it appeared that Louisville would have an advantage. The Cards played some great defense as well and it took a penalty kick for UK to get on the board. Late in the first half Ade Akinsanya went for the ball outside the box and took down a UK player then was called for a foul. UK’s Matt Lodge took the free kick and found the back of the net to put the Wildcats up 1-0. This would be the only goal of the night.

The Cards had won the last three meetings with UK. And they hadn’t allowed a goal since 2007. Louisville has been the dominate soccer program in Kentucky for several years and even made a trip to the 2010 NCAA Championship game. But on this night it was a UK squad that was off to one of their worst starts in the programs history who would be victorious. Every dog, or in this case cat has their day I suppose.

Coach Ken Lolla would say after the game: “The name of the game is scoring goals,” “We got some great opportunities but just never converted,” “I thought our guys battled especially in the second half we just didn’t get any goals.”

Coach Ken Lolla on where his team is at this point in the season: “We are still finding ourselves,” “I loved this atmosphere tonight, a lot of our guys have never played in this type of atmosphere,” “We are still making gains and finding ourselves,” “I like this team and I know we are going to be very good come the end of the year.”

Tonight was a great sports atmosphere at Cardinal Park and perhaps the one thing that I took from it was how much these guys give back, especially to the kids. These guys had just lost a heart breaker to their instate rivals and they stayed over for 20 minutes to sign autographs for the kids. That really was a cool thing for them to do. The Louisville fan base has really rallied around the Olympic sports and tonight it was very apparent that Cardinal Nation loves their soccer team.