Spring Volleyball? In Hawai'i !!! -- Thursday Cardinal Couple

 VOLLEYCARDS SWEEP HAWAI'I 

Come to think of it...Hawai'i wouldn't be all that bad a place to spend a spring break.  

In their second day of action against Hawai'i, Louisville volleyball took another match, shutting out the Rainbow Warrors (or Wahine, (if you prefer) 25-18, 25-17, 25-15. The Cards also won the first match the day before 3-1. 

Blair Thiebaud

It was combination of returrning stars from last season and a new addition that stood out for Louisville in Honolulu. Payton Peterson had 11 kills and 10 digs for the Cards. Kalyssa Blackshear added eight kills and freshman Blair Thiebaud was essential on offense with 31 assists, two blocks and four kills. Thiebaud, a 6'0" setter out of college Station, Texas.has a very impressive resume. She was the #1 setter in Texas in her senior season at Collge Station High School. She was on the USA Women's Under 21 team as a setter and played abroad in Indonesia. 

She was one of five freshman Meske brought on board, his class was ranked fifth in the nation. 

paulie

#4 ranked VolleyCards to face #2 Texas -- WEDNESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

MATCHUP IN FT. WORTH WEDNESDAY NIGHT 

Yes, it is very early in the NCAA DI Volleyball season for such an important matchup but #4 Louisville faces a tough test when they  face the #2 Texas Longhorns on Wednesday night in the Shiners Children's Showdown at 9 p.m. ET. 

The match will be shown on ESPN. The natch will be in Dickies Arena, The arena holds 14,000 for Volleyball. 

The two haven't locked horns (sorry, bad pun) since they met for the 2022 National Championship match that Texas took in three straight sets. All told, in five meetings between the two powerhouse programs, the Longhorns hold a 4-1 edge. The Cards got their lone victory in their first ever Elite eight...back in 2019. 

Jerritt Elliott

While Dan Meske is in his first year as the Cards skipper, Texas head Volleyball coach Jerritt Elliott is in his 25th season as the Texas head coach. The record for Elliott is impressive at 611-121.  He also has three national championships. The Longhorns are located in Austin, so they'll have a three hour trip to Ft. Worth (flight time one hour), but nothing like the 861 mile trip for the Cards (flight time 2 hr. 30 minutes).

Nya Burton (on right)

Nya Burton is on the Texas roster as a middle blocker. You might remember her from Louisville Manual, where she was the 2022 Ms. Kentucky Volleyball and a AVCA First Team All-American.

Stafford

Torrey Stafford leads Bevo's bunch in kills...Volleyball fans will remember her from Pitt. She has 63 in 15 sets. 

The Longhorns are 4-0 on the season...with wins over #12 Creighton, #8 Wisconsin, Rice and #6 Stanford. The won their first two games in Madison,WI. and then returned to Texas to beat Rice in Houston before taking the home opener over Stanford in a close 3-2 match.

Ella Swindle is the assists leader with 118. 

Vander Wal

The Horns also have Abby Vander Wal, an outside hitter out of Elmhurst, IL. She was the 2024 Illinois Gatorade Player of the Year.

Here is a great clip about Vander Wal. The Cards and Nebraska were high on her, but Texas eventually got her. She has a brother who plays basketball at Furman. 

Payton Peterson

For the Cards, Payton Peterson leads the way with 49 kills. Nayelis Cabello has 117 assists in 10 sets and they are are 4-0, winning 13 of the 14 sets they have played. Match wins were against Auburn, Morehead St. St. John's and Illinois

This should be a good one and Case will have the recap in the Thursday Cardinal Couple. 

paulie

New Volleyball Commits -- FRIDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Cards Announce Three New Commits

One might say that the Dan Meske Era has now officially begun. Louisville volleyball has, over the last week, co-announced (along with the players) three new commitments via social media. These will be the first players in the pipeline to join the Louisville program under their new head coach, so it's exciting to see how Meske is seeking out the next talent to step onto the floor for the Cards. All three are 2027 recruits. 

The first announcement came from Carsyn Comer. Comer is a 6'-2" right hander who is listed primarily as a middle blocker. The 2027 recruit hails from Westfield High School in Westfield, Indiana and plays her club volleyball for Munciana, based out of Yorktown. Comer's parents were both collegiate athletes at the University of Toledo: her mom played basketball while her dad played football. Comer was a 2023 AAU All-American and was on the 2024 JVA All-National Team for U17 players. 

Next came Elizabeth Bower, from Nampa, Idaho. Bower is a 5'-9" defensive specialist/libero who plays for Skyview High School and Idaho Crush. Bower also comes from an extremely athletic family, with her father being a D1 basketball player and her mother a D1 volleyball player. Elizabeth is following in her three older sisters' footsteps as she looks to play at the collegiate level: Whitney is an assistant coach at Utah and is a setter in the PVF, Eden is an OH at Auburn, and Alex was on the All-Big 12 Freshman team last season for BYU. 

The most recent commitment came from Keilani Ledaja-Brewer. Keilani is a 6'-0" outside hitter from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The Cards pull her from the backyards of Tobacco Road, so that's certainly a win. Ledaja-Brewer lists herself as "confident, a leader, and a cheerleader for [her] team" which is something that Louisville volleyball fans love to see from their players. VBadrenaline.com gives her approach touch a 9.8/10 rating, so we may have another player on our hands that can leap out of the gym. 

All in all, Meske's tenure is shaping up to be exciting before it even truly gets underway. The Cards will be looking to maintain the momentum from their successes last season, though there is only one way to top finishing as the national runners-up. 

Until next time, go Cards!

Case 

DBK Resigns, Meske Takes Over -- WBB to Face SMU -- THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Dani Busboom Kelly Leaves Louisville, Dan Meske Takes Over

While I was hoping for a calm and peaceful Wednesday night where I could scout SMU women's basketball some, life decided to make it a chaotic middle of the week. We got some pretty big breaking news last night as Dani Busboom Kelly stepped down as head coach of Louisville volleyball to take the head coach position at Nebraska following John Cook's sudden retirement.

The announcement happened quite suddenly about 6:00pm last night and I haven't had time to sit and process this yet so we'll see how sporadic and 'pinballish' my thoughts will be here.

John Cook spent the last 25 years leading Nebraska and led the Huskers to four national championships. While Cook had recently extended his contract through 2029, he decided it was time to ride off into the sunset.

With the head coach vacancy at Nebraska, there was no doubt that the top choice would be Dani Busboom Kelly. DBK won national championships as both a player and a coach under Cook during her time at Nebraska. 

Dani Busboom Kelly came to Louisville in 2017 and coached the Cards for eight seasons. During her tenure, she posted a 203-44 record that included four ACC Championships, eight NCAA Tournament appearances, three Final Fours, and two National Runner-Up finishes. Prior to the arrival of DBK, Louisville had never advanced beyond the Sweet Sixteen.

Under the leadership of DBK, several Louisville players earned All-American honors including Anna DeBeer, Elena Scott, Charitie Luper, Anna Stevenson, Tori Dilfer, Aiko Jones, Raquel Lazaro, Amaya Tillman, and Claire Chaussee.

With Busboom Kelly headed back home to Nebraska, Louisville plans to elevate Dan Meske to head coach at Louisville. Meske joined DBK's staff from day one at Louisville as an associate head coach after previous stints as an assistant coach at Nebraska and a head coach at Augustana.

We will let our Volleyball guru Jeff McAdams provide a much more thorough breakdown of what this means for Louisville in a few days. He will also provide any updates that we may have on Dan Meske's staff (Todd Chamberlain is expected to stay but unconfirmed) and any possible player transfers.

We do wish Dani Busboom Kelly the best at Nebraska.

Women's Basketball Visits SMU

Onto our regularly scheduled happenings, we have Louisville women's basketball set to face off against SMU tonight. The Cards and Mustangs will tip off at 8:00pm ET (7:00pm SMU time) and will air on ACC Network.

Louisville enters the game 14-6 on the year with a 7-2 ACC record. Most recently, the Cards survived a scare at Virginia to earn a road win after falling at Virginia Tech before that. The Cards sit at fourth in the conference, currently.

SMU is 10-11 this season and boasts a 2-7 conference mark. The Mustangs have lost five straight with their most recent loss coming at Miami. Their losing streak began on the road to Pitt in a game that will go down in the NCAA history books. That game saw SMU up by a large a margin before surrendering a 31-0 run including a 28-0 third quarter. Pitt went on a 54-10 extended run to win. The Mustangs' non-conference schedule isn't great and they went 1-3 against 'Power Five' opponents. 

SMU averages 65.8 points per game while surrendering 67.4 ppg. They shoot a solid .375 from the field but have been poor from three-point range, shooting .284. The Mustangs have been outrebounding opponents by two rebounds per game.

Nya Robertson (19.0 ppg) is a dangerous scorer and has had plenty of offensive support from Chantae Embry (11.7 ppg) and Jessica Peterson (9.6 ppg). Peterson has been nearly unstoppable in the paint and brings in 12.3 rebounds per game. The senior center also has 25 blocks on the year.

SMU's team and individual stats are better than their record shows but they have struggled against the competition.

Louisville is 2-1 all-time against SMU. The Mustangs won the inaugural meeting back in 1996 but the Cards took the win in the other two meetings during the 2013-2014 AAC season. 

Walz

Coach Jeff Walz had his pre-contest presser Wednesday before the Cards WBB squad travels to Dallas to face SMU tonite. Hear it below:

WALZ PRESSER 1/29/24

*All photos by Jared*

Happy Thursday and Go Cards!

Jared

Getting to Know the Coaches: Volleyball -- FRIDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Happy Friday! Daryl is out working hard with the Louisville Bats, who continue to remain above .500. See what happens when Daryl is on the premises? Good things !

While we are about a month away from the start of fall sports, we continue our journey of getting to know the coaches and staff of our various Louisville women's teams. We hit field hockey recently and will look at volleyball next.

Dani Busboom Kelly-- Head Coach

Dani Busboom Kelly has been at Louisville for six years, leading the Cards to the NCAA Tournament in each of them. With the exception of the shortened COVID-19 season, Louisville has not had fewer than 22 wins in any season.

Under her leadership, Louisville has three Elite Eight appearances, two Final Four appearances, and a National Runner-Up finish. The Cards earned their first ever #1 ranking in any poll.

Prior to her arrival at Louisville, Busboom Kelly was an assistant coach at Nebraska, where she also played her entire collegiate career. Nebraska made it to the Elite Eight or further four times and won a national championship during her time as an assistant coach. She also won a championship during her playing days.

Going a bit of an untraditional route, Busboom Kelly worked outside of athletics between her playing days and coaching days. While she did play with the U.S. Women's National Training Team for a stint, she spent some time for in the insurance industry out in Omaha.

Dan Meske -- Associate Head Coach

Dan Meske has been at Louisville since Dani Busboom Kelly arrived on campus. One of his specialties with Louisville is coaching the blocking defense and he is a big factor with the recruiting.

Prior to Louisville, Meske was the head coach at Augustana for two years, compiling a 45-17 record during that span. He helped lead the Vikings to the NCAA DIII Tournament in 2016.

Meske was at Nebraska for eight seasons before Augustana. During his time at Nebraska, he served several roles ranging from a graduate assistant, a volunteer assistant, and a full-time assistant coach. 

As a student-athlete, Meske spent all four seasons playing for Ohio State.

Todd Chamberlain-- Assistant Coach

Todd Chamberlain joined the Louisville staff in 2018, one year after Dani Busboom Kelly took over. One of his primary duties is working with outside hitters while also assisting with recruiting.

Chamberlain spent seven years at Kansas as an assistant coach. He was an assistant coach at Kentucky for one year before that.

As a player, Chamberlain played four years for Ball State. Before his collegiate playing days, he played at Louisville Trinity High School.

Sarah Drury Petkovic-- Director of Operations

Sarah Drury Petkovic took over as Louisville's director of operations when Dani Busboom Kelly was named head coach. She had played with Busboom Kelly with Team USA previously.

Petkovic began her journey as a walk-on at Louisville after playing at Louisville PRP High School before earning a scholarship in the back half of her collegiate career. She set the single season digs record with 534. She then went on to play for the USA National Volleyball Team for five years.

After her time with Team USA, Drury Petkovic went on to be an assistant coach at Louisville Assumption High School and later at Indiana University Southeast.

The Louisville volleyball staff is a veteran crew with loads of experience and accolades. Having already helped lead Louisville to new heights, expectations and goals continue to rise for the program. The one big thing that is left on the agenda is winning the National Championship. The Cards have made several runs at it, maybe this will be the season it happens. 

Happy Friday and Go Cards!

Jared

Softball Gets Underway in NCAA Tourney

 Fridays with Daryl Jeff

Hello readers and happy...uh...random weekend!

Jeff here filling in for the birthday celebrating and Bats involved Daryl this week.  Thought I'd try to start out the article kinda like she does, but I just can't mimic Daryl's happy tone that always comes through her writing.

Anyway, I'm here, and we've got an NCAA tournament in Softball to look into.

Softball in Knoxville

The Holly Aprile squad will be playing Indiana to start off the NCAA Softball tournament, but rather than heading north, they are, of course, off to the south to play in the Regional hosted by Tennessee.  Put on your sunglasses, that orange can be piercing!

The Cards and the Hoosiers will get the Regional underway with a 3pm start time.  You'll be able to find the video on ESPN2, which is nice as the later game, Tennessee vs Northern Kentucky apparently merely rates ESPN+ coverage.

The winners will play Saturday at 1pm, the losers will play at 3:30pm.  Beyond that, I'll leave you in the capable hands of Case and his Saturday column to outline the next steps in tomorrow's article.

I

Indiana arrives in Knoxville boasting a 42-16 record for the season.  They had a good run in the Big 10 tournament, eventually dropping to Northwestern in the championship game, 2-1.  Being in the Big 10, there are lots of teams with predominantly reddish logos in the latter part of their season (Nebraska, Rutgers, Minnesota, Ohio State) but they slipped in an extra in the midst with a game on April 11th where they hosted the Cards in Bloomington.  The Hoosiers did come out on the winning that one 10-5.  And, to be fair, they also got in a non-conference game against Western Kentucky the week before, adding to the red theme.

That battle was a two hour 23 minute affair, not terribly surprising with that much scoring, and with that much scoring both teams also used four pitchers in the circle.  UofL started with Alyssa Zabala, followed with Taylor Roby, Gabby Holloway, and finished out with Cassie Grizzard with none of them pitching more than two innings.

The aces of the Hoosier squad are Brianna Copeland, and Heather Johnson, both with over 100 innings pitched.  Copeland brings an ERA of 2.81, and Johnson a still respectable 3.58.  IU looks to have a pretty stable lineup, with eight players playing in 51 or more games, the worst comes up with a .225 batting average and six of them are hitting above .300.  Taryn Kern, and Taylor Minnick lead the team in batting averages with .426 and .404 respectively.

So the Cards have their work cut out for them.  In addition to just wanting to stay on the upper, winners, part of the bracket, advancing through the elimination bracket involves playing back to back games on Saturday, and Aprile will be keen to avoid that.

Podcast Plugging

With my normal Sunday articles, I always get to share the latest from the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast, and I wouldn't want you, our dear readers, to miss out on a podcast plug just because it's Friday.

The CCRHP crew will be up and active tomorrow as per normal, but in the meantime, you can check out a new podcast hosted by Associate Head Coach of Louisville Volleyball Dan Meske.  The podcast is called Out of Rotation and is available, like the CCRHP at all significant podcast directories.  There are two full episodes plus a "Quick Hitter" available at this point.

Episode 0 is the "Quick Hitter" and is about five minutes long on the subject of giving, and receiving feedback in a coaching role, with good life advice for those of us that are in any sort of leadership role.

(Dan Meske jotting down notes for
his next podcast...or a grocery list...maybe
his top ten favorite songs?) 

Episode 1, the first "full" episode, has Raquel Lázaro as a guest and she discusses with Dan her upbringing... playing volleyball, through her progress through college play which of course culminated with UofL in the fall, and her experiences and challenges so far playing at the pro level in Italy.

The other full episode available is a discussion between Meske and Ryan Theis (pronounced Tice), where Theis shares his "grind" through the coaching profession and how he navigated the process to his first head coaching role at Ohio, and now head coach at Marquette for 10 years.

Dan Meske has a great voice for podcasting, and his podcast should be an entertaining listen for anyone interested in college volleyball.

Check out the CCRHP tomorrow, of course, but in the meantime, maybe check out Meske's work.

As always, Go Cards!

-- JMcA

Joy on Sunday -- SUNDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

It's been a crazy, although remarkably non-sucky, week for CardNation, so let's get back a bit to just some unabashedly joyous things, and steer clear of politics and scandals for a bit.  We can call it a bit of Cardinal Couple self care, if you like.

Madame President

Let's start with Dr. Neeli Bendapudi, though.  No, not that topic, we're steering clear of that, remember?  Dr. Bendapudi made an appearance last night at Forecastle, one of the largest music festivals in the Louisville area.  While we, at Cardinal Couple, are partial to Poorcastle with it benefiting our wonderful radio hosts at WCHQ FM, Forecastle is a cultural touchpoint for Louisville every year.  While I've never attended, I certainly respect and honor the impact it has, both culturally, and financially, on our city.  Many people make appearances at Forecastle for what is, at it's core, a rock music festival, that you wouldn't expect.  Jecorey Arthur, known also by his stage name, 1200, has been a regular Hip-hop performer at the festival.  Perhaps counter-intuitively, Arthur leads to Teddy Abrams, The Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra, who this year, was asked to curate the line-up for the WFPK Port Stage at the festival.  Abrams is slated to perform 3 times on the stage, along with 1200 (not the first time those two have teamed up), the Louisville Leopards (another beneficiary of Poorcastle), The River City Drum Corp, Ben Sollee (another frequent collaborator with Abrams), Houndmouth, Wax Fang, and plenty more local acts.  Many of these performers can also be heard on WCHQ, with its laser focus on local music.

Back to Bendapudi, though.  She appeared there with Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, who has some background in music promotion and is a regular at numerous music festivals around the city.  While I suspect Bendapudi's appearance was relatively brief, you have to applaud her ongoing efforts to reach out to UofL's core constituency, the students (who, I'm sure, make up a significant demographic at Forecastle).

Thank you, Dr. Bendapudi for bringing some of the joy back to being a UofL fan.

New Cardinals

And a moment to celebrate one of the most joyous moments possible.  Hendricks Lee Meske is the newest arrival to the CardNation family...literally.  Born yesterday afternoon at a whopping 9lbs 1oz, Hendricks is the 3rd child (all boys) of Dan and Laurel Meske.  Dan is the Associate Head Coach of the UofL Volleyball team.

I have had the joy of getting to chat with both Dan and Laurel on several occasions, and both were a delightful pleasure to talk to.

Congratulations to the Meske's and welcome to CardNation Hendricks.  I'll share with the Meskes a bit of wisdom I picked up somewhere along the way..."When you get the 3, you have to switch to zone defense."

Minor Changes for CCRH

If you tuned in yesterday, you noticed a few minor changes for the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour.  The
show continues, and we'll still have all the normal knuckleheads in the studio whenever possible.

If you watch the Facebook livestream, though, you might have noticed the seating arrangement was a bit different that typical.  Kathy, the station manger, who has graciously engineered the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour from the very beginning, expressed a desire to reclaim her Saturday mornings due to some personal reasons.  Our appreciation for "The Monk" cannot be overstated, she effectively created WCHQ from it's very beginning, and has continued to engineer our show even as the station has grown and other shows switched to other engineers.

We're grateful for her efforts over the years. We'll miss her and Punkin' in the studio and maybe they'll stop in for a visit from time-to-time! 

Going forward, I'll be doing my best to engineer the show.  This is involving learning the systems of WCHQ, including the Facebook Live streaming.  Kathy has done an excellent job of making it all easy to run, but there's still plenty to learn.

If you want to check out the first attempt at this, this is basically how the show was engineered yesterday, with Kathy mostly sitting beside me making sure I flipped all the right switched and clicked all the right buttons.  Overall, I think it went pretty well.

You can check out the results via Facebook Live at:

https://www.facebook.com/WCHQfm/videos/2112430285446910/

Thanks for joining us, as always!

-- 

JMcA