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( Welcome to another Tuesday at CARDINAL COUPLE. We have a two-for-Tuesday special with Jeff's article catching us up on Louisville Volleyball today and Sandy's Laundry day!You have a great chance to see Anne Kordes' exciting team three times beginning Saturday in two different venues. If you haven't caught a UofL Volleyball match this season...you owe it to yourself to see these ladies in action. It'll be your first of many treks to see Lola, Gwen, Emily and the squad do battle! )
This week in Volleyball
Louisville played this weekend in volleyball at South Florida in Tampa, and at Pitt in Pittsburgh...what a road-trip that was...and I didn't make the trip, so I don't have much to offer in match recaps other than what Paul already posted, but I do think its worth it to do a week wrap-up as there is some other news to be shared.
-- UofL Team News
-- Top 25 upsets
-- New, or not so new, rankings
-- First RPI release
UofL Team News
As was mentioned in other articles, Gwen Rucker is back playing full bore, with no apparent lingering effects of her illness. She had some great stats, particularly against Pitt.
Courtney Robison got her cast on her right arm removed this morning and has, apparently, been cleared to play by her doctor. That gives her most of a week to get back in practice and back into form. Its great that she didn't have to be in a cast for that long.
Lastly, as an amusing anecdote, on the return trip from Pittsburgh, flying through Chicago, the team was surprised to see, when they got to their gate to board the flight to Louisville, that the Field Hockey team was on the same flight. I wonder if the ever-personable flight attendants on SouthWest led the passengers in a C-A-R-D-S cheer.
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Top 25 Upsets
Pretty quiet on the upset front for top-25 ranked teams this week. The only upsets within the Top 25 shows that #5 Washington had a really great weekend, with slight upsets over both #3 USC, and #4 UCLA. When you're ranked in the single digits, it pretty much takes a team ahead of your losing, in order for you to move up. Its pretty nice when you get the opportunity to make that happen, not once, but twice, in a single week.
#19 Iowa State lost to unranked-but-getting-votes Kansas, and #25 Tennessee got swept by now-unranked Kentucky, which certainly will help our RPI.
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New, or not so new, rankings
Well, there was some movement in the rankings, just not for us. I thought that BYU loss might cause them to drop enough to land behind us, but not quite, as they ended up dropping 7 spots to land just in front of us at #16. We retained our #17 ranking. Washington's big weekend nets them a tie for 2nd with Oregon. St. Mary's (Ca.) is now getting votes, but isn't ranked. Tennessee, unsurprisingly, dropped out, but are, of course, still getting votes.
We play Texas in a week, and they're still hanging out at #9. They play #14 Kansas State on Saturday before coming in to Louisville Monday night. Someone remind me to throw out some "Hook 'em"'s on Saturday night because I don't want us to have to play them coming off of a loss.
Illinois is at #21, Purdue at #12...so things seem to be settling down in the coaches' polls after some big early season movements.
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First RPI release
The NCAA put out its first RPI (Ratings Percentage Index, in case you care to know what that acronym expands out to) for the Volleyball season. The RPI tends to get a lot of scrutiny paid to it when it comes tournament selection time, which is why you'll see Anne Kordes pay a lot more attention to it rather than the coaches poll.
Texas is #15 in the RPI, so a win over the Longhorns in a week would be a nice boost for us as well. The next highest Big East team is Marquette at #42, and then the aforementioned Notre Dame. We play Marquette, in Milwaukee, on October 21st, and then back here at Cardinal Arena, on November 9th. We do not have another match against Notre Dame in the regular season.
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Next?
( Just a quick reminder that the first round action in picking your favorite UofL women's athlete is underway on the left side of the board and our first match in the first round has become a nail-biter between Gwen Rucker and Nikki Boltja. You have through today to vote and determine who moves on to the "Elite Eight". We'll feature Rowing's Erin Bennett against Cross Country's Michelle Molodynia starting Wednesday...)
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Is Louisville still the favorite to win the Big East with the loss to Notre Dame?
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard any official chatter on that, but I suspect so, yes.
ReplyDeleteCurrent standings have us tied for 3rd with Seton Hall and Notre Dame (ND lost to Marquette). St. Johns and Marquette are undefeated, so far.