The Irish Unlucky in Meeting Louisville
The Cards were casually dominant in the second half of the home and home meetings against Notre Dame, winning the sweep; 25-12, 25-16, 25-12. The Cards advance to 19-3 overall and 11-1 in conference.
For the moment, that puts the Cards in sole possession of first place in the ACC, but that's only because our matches were Wednesday/Saturday this week rather than the ty
pical Friday/Sunday of conference play. Pitt and North Carolina will be playing later today to return to the tie for 1st place. Pitt should have an easy time at Virginia Tech at 1pm, but North Carolina has their work cut out for them with Georgia Tech paying a visit at noon. If you're itching for some volleyball to watch this afternoon, UNC/GT should be a good one to catch. Of course, lots of eyes will also be on Stanford at FSU after Stanford's loss to Miami Friday. UNC/GT is on ACCNx, while Stanford and FSU are getting the prime ESPN 1pm slot.
Back to the Cards, though. I initially thought to say that the Cards were in control from the first point of the game, but the reality is that the Irish won the first two points of the match, led at 6-4 and it wasn't until the match was tied at seven that the Cards really began to assert themselves. Starting at 6-7 the Cards ran off a 5-0 run to 11-7, and really never looked back. The rest of the match featured ND scores between another 5-0 run, a pair of 4-0 runs, and a final 2 points to win the set.
In a moment of amusement during the first set, the score graphic overlay for the jumbotron in the arena flashed up near the beginning of the set, about three points in, showing a score of 25-12 with Louisville in the lead. It would take the operators a few minutes to work out the glitch and get the correct current score displayed. And then Louisville won the set by that same 25-12 score. Maybe a little bit of left over Halloween spookiness?
The second set was the closest by the Irish, as you can see from the set scores, but Louisville was able to steadily gain and increase the lead throughout the set, with the exception of a 5-0 ND run that brought them back into semi-competitive score at 16-13. Louisville would get their foot back on the accelerator pedal, including a 5-0 run of their own, to take the set 25-16.
By the third and final set, the crowd had grown very quiet. Even the Louisville crowd (about half of which were friends and family of Cara Cresse, who hails from Fort Wayne, IN, an under two hour drive to South Bend) couldn't muster up much motivation to cheer too terribly loud as the match took on the proverbial air of beating a dead horse. The Cards jumped out to a 7-2 lead and that just seemed to take the fight out of the Notre Dame squad. It just continued from there, with Louisville lead checkpoints at 16-6 and 20-8 on the way to the 25-12 win.
It was a pretty easy victory over the Irish at Purcell Pavilion. Louisville held ND to a whopping 0.000 hitting percentage...meaning they had as many hitting errors as they had kills. Some credit there does go to Louisville's block, with six in the quick three set match that clocked in at a mere one hour and 15 minutes of playing time. Louisville hit at a respectable .321 clip with a very well spread offense.
Charitie Luper led the Cards with 12 kills, hitting .417. Anna DeBeer had six kills, Cara Cresse and Hannah Sherman balanced each other well with five kills each, as did Reese Robins and Sofia Maldonado Diaz with four each. Sherman tallied a pair of solo blocks and shared a pair with Cresse getting a solo and a share of her own. Luper, Robins, and Alanna Bankston all got in on the blocking as well. While we're singing Sherman's accolades, it's only fair to mention the efficiency of her kills, chalking up an eye-popping .714 percentage. Cresse was a bit less efficient, but still very good .417. Maldonado Diaz, who never gets enough attention for her contributions, in my opinion, hit at a very fine .429 clip as well.
Kamden Schrand shone from the service line as well as doing a fine job digging, claiming three points through aces. That eclipsed Elle Glocks pair with Luper, Elena Scott, and Sam Untiedt each getting one as well.
The Cards stay on the road for the coming week traveling to the northern extremities of the ACC, visiting Syracuse on Friday, and Boston College a week from today, and back to the familiar pattern of Friday/Sunday play.
Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast
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| (the c.c. crew...pre daryl) |
As I was on the road heading to South Bend, we didn't have the live broadcast of the CCRHP, but Jared, Case, and Paulie did get together for the recording and posting to podcast directories as Case typically takes care of that side of the CCRHP technical duties.
I have not yet had a chance to listen to it as I was tuned in to the big Louisville Football win last night (Clemson fans really rushed the field after a loss? That's weird. Hat tip to Mike Rutherford for that multi-year running gag that continues to pay dividends.)
Check out the trio podcast at:
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JMcA
Z committed to LSU. Sad
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