Volleyball Uses Comebacks to Sweep Dayton

A look at the stats show that Louisville may have escaped with this match. The Cards trailed in aces and blocks and had more overall errors than the Flyers. However, Louisville was able to garner more kills to outweigh their errors, and actually finished with a higher hitting percentage than Dayton in each game. Louisville was led in kills by, you guessed it, Melanie McHenry. However, McHenry was joined at the top by Amanda Green. The two finished with 15 apiece, which was tops in the match for both teams. In fact, Green and McHenry's 30 total kills were only three fewer than the entire Dayton team. The two contributed 12 errors, but finished hitting .206 (McHenry) and .355 (Green). Louisville finished at .232 as a team, and Dayton was all the way down at .155.
Dayton's game plan was clearly to try to get Louisville out of rotation, and they had some measure of success. The Flyers forced McHenry into 7 digs and 12 receives (1 receiving error), Green into 8 and 19 (1 RE), and Wilma Rivera into 10 digs. Molly Sauer was held to only 16 digs and contributed a receiving error on her 23 attempts. To their credit, Rivera was able to recover and pick up 40 of the team's 49 assists on 50 total kills, with Sauer contributing 6 assists to the cause. The Cards finished with only three aces compared to seven service errors, which is a statistic that has bitten Louisville significantly this season. They were able to weather it in this match, but they can be sure that their tournament run will end early if they are unable to prevent giving away points with absolutely no work required by the opponent.

A tough match awaits, as the Cards will take on the hosting Illini, but this team has shown resilience and the ability to hang tough with strong teams. We'll see if the Louisville team that is capable of winning big matches shows up today, or if the moment will get the better of them. Louisville faces Illinois at 8PM Eastern, and the match should be available on the BTN2GO option.
Emina Ekic Named Second Team All-American

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour
Jeff is up in Champaign to watch the Cards advance toward that black banner and Jared is training the computer to take over his job, so Paulie and I will be joined in the studio by Paige Sherrard and Daryl Foust. We'll have plenty to talk about with the women's basketball team in full swing, and we'll use the wonders of technology to get a segment with Jeff over the phone. Tune in to WCHQ FM at 11 AM to join us on the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour. WCHQ is available at 100.9 FM, wchqfm.com, the WCHQ App, and on Facebook Live.
Until next time, Go Cards!
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That Volleyball rally was something else in the first two games! I hope they can pull the upset over UofI. Congrats to Tyra for showing up.
ReplyDeleteEkic with a nice honor. She's another the Cards WSOC can point to to verify the importance of keeping Karen Ferguson Dayes in Louisville. Karen went out and got the hometown kid.
Looking forward to the Cardinal Couple Radio show this morning. PAige and Daryl are two of my favorites!
R.I.P. George "H.W." Bush. You were a victim of changing times for your one term. "Read My Lips" came back to bite you. Go easy, flyboy.
Curtis "I heard it on the radio" Franklin