Sweet Sixteen Bound Volleyball - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Sweet Sixteen Bound

The VolleyCards are Sweet 16 bound.  The Cards defeated Purdue in straight sets (25-19, 25-21, 25-23) to advance from the sub-regionals of the NCAA Volleyball tournament into the regional rounds, or rounds three and four.

By virtue of being the number one seed in the region, UofL will continue to host, but NCAA requires that 3rd and 4th rounds are held in facilities that can seat at least 3,000 people.  Last year, that necessitated last minute negotiations and shuffling of several events between UofL and Bellarmine to accommodate play at Freedom Hall.  This year, UofL was able to secure access to the KFC Yum! Center for the event, simplifying preparations considerably.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though, and take a look at last night's match.

It was a straight set sweep affair, and UofL came out of the locker room clearly ready to get the job done.  The Boilermakers, however, were not to be easily swept aside.  A couple of early Amaya Tillman kills and a Purdue attack error got Louisville out to an early 7-3 lead.  Purdue would consistently punch back, but never with the same ferocity.  A pair of Purdue points, were met by a trio of Cards points, a Purdue point, met by a pair of UofL points and the lead was 12-6.

Nine errors by Purdue in the first set would really seal the deal, though.  Contributing to .114 hitting in set one for the engineers.  To be fair, the Cards hit an acceptable, but not stellar .286 in set one.

The second set closed the gap ever so slightly, the lead was 12-7 rather than 12-6, for example, but it similarly wouldn't be enough.  Phekran "PK" Kong made her presence known in this set after closing out the first.  Again, the teams traded punches, with the Cards punching just that little bit harder to slowly but surely open up the lead.  Anna DeBeer continued her return to form with a side out kill to make the score 20-17 which was greeted with great enthusiasm from the heavily red-tinted crowd.

I'm not sure what happened at the set break, but whatever it was, maybe try something different.  The Cards came out looking distracted and just a step slow.  Purdue crafted their first lead of the match with a set-opening run of four points.  The Cards wouldn't tie the set until 6-6, and wouldn't take a lead until 9-8.  Mostly credit the middle hitters for triggering the run with several kills by Amaya Tillman and PK Kong being key.  Purdue would continue to get small leads, at 10-9, 16-13, and even as late as 22-21.  Kills by Claire Chaussee and Anna DeBeer would push the Cards lead to 23-22 before Purdue would claw one back to tie it at 23.  Attacking errors would do the Boilermakers in, though with a pair of them resulting in the set, and match, win for the Cards.  There was a bit of crowd displeasure when Dave Shondell issued a challenge on the last play of the match, but the original call was upheld and the Cards got to celebrate twice.

Claire Chaussee led the Cards with 12 kills for a .205 percentage.  She only had three errors but credit to Purdue's defense digging well on so many of Chaussee's 44 attempts.  She seasoned her stat line with a trio of digs, a pair of assists a solo block and a trio of shares.  Amaya Tillman followed closely behind with 11 kills and a whopping .600 rate.  A pair of blocks is pretty much just another day at the office for Tillman, but the trio of digs, including a big diving one is an impressive add-on for a middle.  DeBeer finished with four kills and 11 digs as she continues to improve her mobility game by game.  Elena Scott was passing dimes all evening with 22 digs and picks up a couple of assists in the process.

Overall the Cards only hit .246 on the evening, a bit lower than usual.  Again, credit to Purdue's defense for that.  The Cards led 4-0 in aces, and 10-3 in blocks, which pretty much make up the difference in scores across the match.

So the Cards win and advance.  The next match will be against Baylor at the KFC Yum! Center on Thursday December 8th.  Times will be set today, but we're expecting earlier in the day as the other three hosting teams are Wisconsin, Texas, and Stanford, meaning we're the only eastern time zone host.  The other teams coming to Louisville are Nebraska, and Oregon.  This is a completely chalk regional with Baylor being the four seed, Nebraska the two, and Oregon the three.  In fact, the only non-chalk team in the Sweet 16 is Houston, the five seed in the Stanford region.  UH advanced over South Dakota in the first round, and then over Auburn in the second.  Auburn was responsible for dispatching the four seed in the region, Creighton, in the first round.

The only teams that beat Louisville this season are both still alive in the tournament, with Ohio State the three seed in the Texas region, and set to play Minnesota; and Pitt set to play Florida.  Kentucky is also still alive as the three seed in the Stanford region, and they will be playing San Diego who gave Louisville a good showing early in the season.

(VOLLEYBALL PHOTOS BY JARED ANDERSON)

Basketball

Jeff Walz' squad is in Tennessee, set to play Middle Tennessee at 5pm eastern.  The hoopsters will be looking to bounce back after a terrible fourth quarter against Ohio State when an upset win was a real possibility until the wheels fell off.

The Raiders are 4-2 on the season.  They opened with a one point loss to Mercer before obliterating the Southern Illinois Salukis 90-38.  They continued that momentum into a solid win over a common opponent, the Belmont Bruins, 80-62.  Their other loss came to Texas Tech in Las Vegas, and they are now on a two game win streak over Missouri State, and Tennessee Tech.

The top point scorer for the Raiders is Savannah Wheeler averaging 17 points per game, followed closely by Kseniya Malashka, of Belarus, with 15.2 per game.  Jalynn Gregory and Courtney Whitson are the main three point threats with both hitting a third of their attempts or better.

TV for this one is only ESPN+, and if you don't have that, of course you can always listen in with Nick Curran and Cortnee Walton on 93.9FM The Ville.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour Podcast

We had the full crew on the CCRHP call yesterday.  After the usual pleasantries, we dug into a good discussion of what's going on with Basketball before turning to the joy and excitement of Volleyball winning.

You can check out the podcast at it's anchor.fm home at

https://anchor.fm/cardinal-couple/episodes/Volleyball-Advances-in-the-Tournament-e1rmnel

-- JMcA

Rain Rain Go Away - Sunday Cardinal Couple

Volleyball

Volleyball lost an epic match in Purdue's Holloway Gym to the 19th ranked, Boilermakers (25-23, 17-25, 28-26, 13-25, 15-10).

I wasn't able to be there for this one in person, but I did catch most of the Purdue Sports Network broadcast of it, and it was a barn-burner.  Both teams considered this one an important match, with Louisville looking for a big early season signature win over a ranked team, and Purdue facing their first team that's really vying for national attention.  The Boilermakers did come into this one also looking to defend their undefeated record.

I do want to draw some attention to a bit of a pattern in the set scores.  The sets that Purdue won were very close, 25-23, 28-26, and 15-10 being the biggest margin; while the Cards victorious sets were by solid margins, 25-17, 25-13.  A couple of other numbers to look at, hitting percentages with the Cards outhitting Purdue .199 to .152 (neither are numbers to write home about, but more on that below). 63 kills for the Cards to 50 for Purdue, 77 digs for UofL to 61 for the train builders.  All of these stats point to a team that, in the overall, outplayed Purdue.  It's really quite difficult, in the stats sheet, to figure out why and how Purdue won the match.  If I had to give an answer, it would be a question of defense for both teams.  Purdue outblocked the Cards 15-8, which is not a category that UofL typically finds themselves on the short end.  You could probably point to defense beyond the block, even with UofL winning the dig stat, for some credit to Purdue here, though that's much harder to judge from just audio coverage of the game vs seeing it in person.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, the kills leader for UofL was Melanie McHenry, who planted 17, but for efficiency, Megan Sloan was tops out of the hitters with 14 kills for .321.  Wilma Rivera took the absolute top spot in hitting percentage with .500.  I usually don't include her in this discussion because she typically doesn't have enough attempts to be statistically significant, but she swung on 10 last night, landing 6, so we'll give her due credit in this one.  Jasmine Bennett also reached double digits in hitting with 10, for .261.  On the defensive side of things, Molly Sauer dug 30, Melanie McHenry next with 18, which makes a double-double for her.  In blocking defense, the freshman Emily Scott continues to establish her presence in the middle with a solo and 4 shares.  Megan Sloan got in on 4, Jasmine Bennett had a hand in 3, McHenry 2, and Rivera got in on 1 as well.

Louisville really wanted this one, and winning it would've gone a long way towards moving them up into the Top 25 rankings.  It is still a possibility, with many ranked teams taking upset losses this weekend, but don't hold your breath.

Louisville will wrap up non-conference play for the season next weekend.  The schedule starts Friday with the biggest non-conference matchup of the year, and not just because rivalry.  Kentucky is currently ranked 16th in the country with updated rankings to come out tomorrow and while I expect this ranking update to have a lot of movement, I don't expect UK to change their position too much.  They lost this weekend to #6 Texas and beat an unranked Texas State team.  This match and the conference matchup with Pitt will likely be the last chances this team has to get really signature wins against ranked teams for the season.

The atmosphere in Cardinal Arena should be raucous for the Friday night (7 p.m.) match.  The Cards did beat UK in spring play, so the teams should be well matched, if you come to any Volleyball matches this year, you should try to be there for this one.

Football and Rain

3.84.  That was the number of inches of rain that fell on Louisville yesterday according to the official records...with most of that falling during the evening hours.  The official measuring point for the National Weather Service in Louisville is at Louisville International Airport, a stone's throw away from Cardinal Stadium where Louisville was playing Indiana State in a football game that was so long they could've almost played the game twice except for the weather delays.  Some rain gauges in the Louisville area registered over 6 and a half inches of rain for the day.  The game suffered over 2 and a half hours of lightning delay, meaning the first quarter of the game didn't end until almost 3 hours after it began.  Fans that (understandably) left the game early had to walk or drive through approximately 6 inches water on Floyd Street to get away from the stadium.

Louisville would eventually go on to win this one 31-7 after a 7-7 halftime score after a QB switch and plenty of other weeping and gnashing of teeth from fans.  You can find plenty of analysis (that frankly would be far more insightful than anything I could come up with) on plenty of other sites, so I'll leave that to them.

EDITOR NOTE: Sonya and I endured the 5 plus hours of the game, plus over three hours of "wet-gating" before the contest. We left after the Cards scored their final touchdown. There were maybe 12 people left in our section. I've attended some pretty wet and nasty football game in my 46 years of attending Cardinal football. The Florida State and Kentucky games come to mind, but this one, I think, has them beat water-wise. We waded back to our car thoroughly soaked. I think I hit the sack around 1:30 AM. How was your Saturday? 

(Rain photo of Paulie and Sonya courtesy of Jared Anderson. Check his work out at JDA Photography!) 

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

Jared couldn't be with us yesterday, but Case, Paulie, and I graced the airways with our weekly broadcast originating from the magnificent media mansion on Mellwood.  You can check out the FB live stream of the broadcast at:

https://www.facebook.com/WCHQfm/videos/502815183520630/

-- 

JMcA

Sunday Cardinal Couple -- Let's call this upset weekend in volleyball

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SUNDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

( We're pleased to give you a "twin spin" on articles today...first up, you'll find JEFF McADAMS very good review and commentary on the weekend Volleyball triumphs . Following this, Paulie's piece on volleyball, field hockey and football. Two for the price of one today...and we don't even charge you for the one! )

What a weekend for volleyball

A quick look around the NCAA

#14 Minnesota beats #4 Texas

Unranked Western Kentucky beats #10 Dayton

Unranked Oregon State beats #2 Penn State

Unranked Marquette beats #23 Michigan

Unranked Miami (Fla.) beats #6 Florida State

And of course, why we're here:

#24 Louisville beats #11 Purdue

#24 Louisville beats #20 Illinois

Big East, meet one of the powerhouse conferences

Of the 12 Big 10 teams in volleyball, half of them are ranked, with Michigan State also receiving votes. That makes them the conference with the most ranked teams (6, compared to also-perennial-powerhouse the PAC-10...er PAC-12...with 5).  The Big East only has one...we managed to make it in at 24 (sorry, Paulie, it was a nice turn of phrase, but we're not unranked).

You can imagine, then, that in the Big East/Big Ten challenge, the Big Ten tends to be rather heavily favored.  This year was no different with Louisville and Cincinnati representing the Big East, and #11 Purdue and #20 Illinois representing the Big Ten.  Also remember that UofL was a combined 3-18 against these teams all time with all of those wins coming against Illinois (0-10 vs Purdue, although Purdue's media guide calls it 0-11, apparently they beat us in 1977, the first season of UofL play which is only listed as "no records kept" in the media guide, regardless of who's records you believe, Louisville has never prevailed over the Boilermakers before this weekend).

Friday evening

With spirits high, the Cards take the floor and decide that they aren't going to take "no" for an answer and not only beat Purdue, they did so in solid fashion with a 3-0 sweep. I don't think I can do justice to the feeling of the UofL fans in attendance.  Most were family and good friends of players on the team, with a leavening of us "unaffiliated" fans (I had several family members ask who I was related to on the team over the course of the evening), but the small number didn't dampen the spirits and enough decibels were produced to fill Fifth Third Arena with C-A-R-D-S when Purdue took a timeout.

This was a true team effort, with no one player completely dominating.  Lola put up her typical, quite impressive, stats (20 kills, 11 digs). Tanya Lukyanenko hit a quite impressive .500 with 5 kills on 10 attempts and no errors.  Gwen Rucker and Brooke Mattingly continued to play solidly in the middle. Alas Brooke apparently didn't get credited with the assist off of her head that Lola killed to seal the match.

Emily Juhl is probably the most noteworthy of players in this match as she is working her way back into playing form after off-season surgery.  With 7 of 12 hitting with no mistakes (for a very good .583), I'd say she's well on her way back to being a great weapon.

In the first two sets, Louisville pulled out solid leads and then held on as Purdue started to claw their way back into the games, but ran out of time in both sets.  The third set was a back and forth affair, but the Cards were able finish out the match for a huge win.

This wasn't a huge win just because it was an upset over a higher ranked team.  It was a huge win because there seemed to be such a mental block in playing against Purdue...an 0-10 (or 0-11) record will do that to you.  There were smiles all around after the match (and via Twitter) as players, family, friends, (and alumnae) almost unanimously exclaimed, "Finally!"

Saturday evening

Let down?  Not this time.  Facing #20 Illinois, the VolleyCards came out strong and needed that strength and determination to take the win in 5 sets.

In winning the first, third, and fifth sets, the Cards looked the better team. In losing the second and fourth sets, Illinois showed they could match, just barely, the Louisville play.

Illinois is a good blocking team, but their digging and passing is a bit suspect. That sounds a lot like a traditional Louisville team.

Again, a roll call of individual efforts; Lola, Tanya, Gwen, Brooke, Emily with good hitting and blocking numbers, Katie and Hannah evenly splitting setting duties, and a committee of players, (led by Lola in this case) hoovering up many shots otherwise headed to the hardwood.

Conclusions

I said after the Penn State match that this was a team that at the end of the season might be able to beat the Nittany Lions.  If you had told me, though, that we'd be 3-1 against Top 20 teams just two weeks later, I would've said, "You're crazy." and yet, here we are.  This team has come together to play as a unit much faster than I ever would have expected.  Credit to the determination and cohesive spirit of the team, as well as to the coaching staff, for getting this group of women settled in to playing together so quickly.

The team that played this weekend against Purdue and Illinois could play competitively with any team in the country.  Now the challenge will be to maintain this level of play for the rest of the season.  And, of course, there's always room for improvement.

Coming up next is the Louisville Invitational, another 3-matches-in-2-days affair at the KFC Yum! Center this weekend.  Middle Tennessee, UNLV, and Miami (Fla.) come to visit.  Miami is getting votes for rankings, but not enough to make it into the Top 25 yet.  Though with that win over #6 Florida State, might they crack their way into the rankings tomorrow?  We'll see.  After that, the Cards launch the conference slate.

With so many fall sports doing so well at UofL, its hard to support them all, spread the love around, if you like.  I'm going to try to make it out to the women's soccer game against Toledo this afternoon, but you can count on me being in my seat in row K come Friday and Saturday.

(Update: I'm not sure why I kept thinking Purdue was 10th ranked...they are 11th...until tomorrow)