For Cards...road to NCAA Volleyball Final Game goes through Pittsburgh -- WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 PANTHERS HAVE HAD UOFL'S NUMBER THIS YEAR. 

Being one of four teams still alive in the NCAA Volleyball Championship is no small feat

Especially when you consider 346 colleges and universities offer women's volleyball as a DI sport. Only Di women's basketball hs more participants, and that just barely.... with 351.

Louisville Volleyball has been considered one of the top four most of the season that is drawing to an end, and has shown they are worthy of the spot,...going 29-5 on the season. When you consider four of the five Cardinals losses came against fellow Final Four participants Penn State, Pittsburgh (2x) and Nebraska and the other was to Stanford, who the Cards got revenge on in the "Great Eight''...it's not entirely wrong to consider the Cardinals the "dark horse" to win the national title. Even if the semifinal and final games are in the place that the Cards call their second home...the KFC YUM! Center. .

And it is that double loss nemesis...Pittsburgh...that stands in Louisville's way of playng in the National Championship.this year. 

Pitt defeated the Cards in five sets back on October 25th, back in Pittsburgh.  When the two met again, in Louisville, in the KFC YUM! Center...a month later on Nov. 27th...the Panthers put another "L" on the Cards record with a four set win. 

Since the regular season ending two losses, though, to Pitt and Stanford, it has been a different Cardinals squad. Maybe they were led by the fiercely determined Anna DeBeer, who didn't want her fifth and final season to end without a chance to play for the NCAA DI title. . Maybe it was the addition of Charitie Luper in 2023, who is another "kill artist' for the Cards...or maybe this year's addition of Sofia Maldonado-Diaz, who desperately wanted to play for a school that would let her compete in the Final Four. 

Realistically, three players can't comprise a whole team that has made it this far. and Louisville certainly needed so many other solid contributors...like Elena Scott, Cara Cresse, PK Kong, Hannah Sherman, Reese Robins...and the other stars on Dani Busboom Kelly's 17 player roster. 

Maybe DeBeer., who got off to a rough start this season. best summed it up as well as anyone when she said:

"I got off to a rough start this season, I know, better than anybody, what I am capable of doing and I wasn't doing my best. I think I was putting too much pressure on myself. There was something wrong. ..so I worked on the mental stuff with a psychologist and got through it. I'm playing freer now...and more fearless...and I'm pretty pleased with how I am playing now.."

And that play has had to come in three different venues that are called "home" for the Cardinals. The LNFCU (Louisville and Nashville Federal Credit Union Arena) on campus. downtown's KFC YUM! Center and Freedom Hall out at the Kentucky Exposition Center near the airport. One gets the feeling this Cardinals fan base would follow them to Indy, Nashville, Lexington, Cincinnati...wherever they would play, and the only drawback would be the tickets available. 

Fans from other volleyball powerhouses tend to snicker at the tiny LNFCU venue...and it is high time that the money and backers be found to build an on-campus arena for this volleyball squad.

 I've thought about that often, especially when sitting in the women's soccer press box and gazing out on this huge field north of Lynn Stadium that had nothing but cars parked in it. If field hockey, lacrosse, softball and soccer can play on campus, why not put the most successful sports program in the last four years at Louisville in a larger arena on campus that'll hold the 8,000 or so who flock to the YUM to see them play? 

If the Cards can draw over 8,000 for fans in the KFC  YUM! Center, why continue to have them play in front of just 1200 in the LNFCU?   In addition to extra revenue, a larger arena would bring in, it would also be a place where ALL of the15 or so regular season home games the VolleyCards play could be played. 

I can still see Howard Schnellenberger  pointing westward from the old Cards football stadium at the Fairgrounds...saying "if you build it , they will come."  It was built and football attendance went up.

If you build it for Volleyball, they will come. 

It's time, UofL. Time to invest

paulie