Tuesday Cardinal Couple -- Volleyball week wrap-up

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( Welcome to another Tuesday at CARDINAL COUPLE. We have a two-for-Tuesday special with Jeff's article catching us up on Louisville Volleyball today and Sandy's Laundry day!

You have a great chance to see Anne Kordes' exciting team three times beginning Saturday in two different venues. If you haven't caught a UofL Volleyball match this season...you owe it to yourself to see these ladies in action. It'll be your first of many treks to see Lola, Gwen, Emily and the squad do battle! )

This week in Volleyball

Louisville played this weekend in volleyball at South Florida in Tampa, and at Pitt in Pittsburgh...what a road-trip that was...and I didn't make the trip, so I don't have much to offer in match recaps other than what Paul already posted, but I do think its worth it to do a week wrap-up as there is some other news to be shared.

-- UofL Team News

-- Top 25 upsets

-- New, or not so new, rankings

-- First RPI release

UofL Team News

As was mentioned in other articles, Gwen Rucker is back playing full bore, with no apparent lingering effects of her illness.  She had some great stats, particularly against Pitt.

Also racking up some great stats, as was mentioned, was Emily Juhl.  Its great to have so much depth and so many offensive weapons.  Emily seems to be recovering from her off-season surgery well and returning to form.  If you've never heard (yes, I said heard) her serve in Cardinal Arena, you should come to the match Saturday.  Its intimidating!  Its great to have her back and performing well as it gives us yet another great offensive weapon.  Lola may be the star, but with so many options, opponents really can't afford to key on her completely or they'll get beaten up by the likes of Gwen, Emily, and Brooke Mattingly, who continues to play great ball, and others.

Courtney Robison got her cast on her right arm removed this morning and has, apparently, been cleared to play by her doctor.  That gives her most of a week to get back in practice and back into form.  Its great that she didn't have to be in a cast for that long.

Lastly, as an amusing anecdote, on the return trip from Pittsburgh, flying through Chicago, the team was surprised to see, when they got to their gate to board the flight to Louisville, that the Field Hockey team was on the same flight.  I wonder if the ever-personable flight attendants on SouthWest led the passengers in a C-A-R-D-S cheer.

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Top 25 Upsets

Pretty quiet on the upset front for top-25 ranked teams this week.  The only upsets within the Top 25 shows that #5 Washington had a really great weekend, with slight upsets over both #3 USC, and #4 UCLA.  When you're ranked in the single digits, it pretty much takes a team ahead of your losing, in order for you to move up.  Its pretty nice when you get the opportunity to make that happen, not once, but twice, in a single week.

The bigger upset is #11 BYU losing to unranked St. Mary's (Ca.).  St. Mary's (Ca.) also had a good week as they knocked off #18 Pepperdine. Pepperdine had a bad week as they also lost to unranked Santa Clara.

#19 Iowa State lost to unranked-but-getting-votes Kansas, and #25 Tennessee got swept by now-unranked Kentucky, which certainly will help our RPI.

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New, or not so new, rankings

Well, there was some movement in the rankings, just not for us.  I thought that BYU loss might cause them to drop enough to land behind us, but not quite, as they ended up dropping 7 spots to land just in front of us at #16.  We retained our #17 ranking.  Washington's big weekend nets them a tie for 2nd with Oregon.  St. Mary's (Ca.) is now getting votes, but isn't ranked.  Tennessee, unsurprisingly, dropped out, but are, of course, still getting votes.

Western Kentucky is turning out to be quite a bit more of an RPI booster than I think any Louisville folks expected, they keep creeping up the list and have made it to #20 now.  Nothing but love for the Hilltoppers from me.

We play Texas in a week, and they're still hanging out at #9. They play #14 Kansas State on Saturday before coming in to Louisville Monday night.  Someone remind me to throw out some "Hook 'em"'s on Saturday night because I don't want us to have to play them coming off of a loss.

Illinois is at #21, Purdue at #12...so things seem to be settling down in the coaches' polls after some big early season movements.

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First RPI release

The NCAA put out its first RPI (Ratings Percentage Index, in case you care to know what that acronym expands out to) for the Volleyball season.  The RPI tends to get a lot of scrutiny paid to it when it comes tournament selection time, which is why you'll see Anne Kordes pay a lot more attention to it rather than the coaches poll.

Good news!  UofL is ranked 4th in the RPI.  With wins over 6 Top 50 RPI teams...#10 Purdue, #17 Kentucky, #23 Miami (Fl.), #31 WKU, #37 Duke, and #43 Illinois...and only two losses...#1 Penn State, and #50 Notre Dame...we're looking pretty good.

Texas is #15 in the RPI, so a win over the Longhorns in a week would be a nice boost for us as well. The next highest Big East team is Marquette at #42, and then the aforementioned Notre Dame.  We play Marquette, in Milwaukee, on October 21st, and then back here at Cardinal Arena, on November 9th. We do not have another match against Notre Dame in the regular season.

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Next?

This weekend, we welcome Seton Hall to Cardinal Arena (not The KFC Yum! Center for this one) for a noon first serve on Saturday.  Another noon start Sunday against Rutgers...this one is back downtown.  And while technically the volleyball world considers it next week, not this week, I'll go ahead and mention that Monday night brings #9(poll)/#15(RPI) Texas for a 7pm first serve.  This one, too, is downtown at the KFC Yum! Center.  Texas will be the last big RPI match we'll likely play for the season, so bring your friends and neighbors for this one.


( Just a quick reminder that the first round action in picking your favorite UofL women's athlete is underway on the left side of the board and our first match in the first round has become a nail-biter between Gwen Rucker and Nikki Boltja. You have through today to vote and determine who moves on to the "Elite Eight". We'll feature Rowing's Erin Bennett against Cross Country's Michelle Molodynia starting Wednesday...) 
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Volleyball Block Party at the Cardinal Couple place

The Cardinal Couple are out of town in Florida (I hear they stowed away in Mario Benavides' luggage instead of hitch-hiking), so...party at the Cardinal Couple place.  Don't worry about the mess, we can blame it on Bill the Goat and Timmy the Chimp.

Who's going to be there?

Gwen Rucker didn't dress last week, fighting an illness.  She did dress for the party last night, but didn't play.  Presumably she's still recovering.  Here's to hoping that she keeps feeling better.

Courtney Robison (sophomore transfer from West Virginia) got dressed up in a bright pink number for the party, but unfortunately, the pink number was a cast on her right arm.  That didn't stop her from cheering from the bench like she always can be counted on to do, but it did prevent her from subbing in for some relief serving and on defense.  The pink looks good on you Courtney, but I do hope it comes off as soon as possible, but long enough to heal up well.

Let's get that dance floor warmed up

If you've never been to a UofL Volleyball match, they've embraced the dramatic lights-off, video-on-the-big-screen, driving-music-with-a-strong-beat intro that you're used to with basketball.  Its a great start for the match and always a lot of fun to get the crowd up and cheering, usually topped off with the inimitable Sean Moth's "Ladies and Gentlemen on your feet...".

Unfortunately, last night, after all of the starters were introduced and it was time to get out on the court and start play...the lights didn't come back on.  So we had a 20 or 30 minute delay while the lights cooled down and then warmed back up.  It was a good atmosphere, with the teams meeting on opposite sides of the net and showing off some of their dance moves, which I guess is also a pretty good way to stay warm and loose during a delay.  Once again, Lola showed her multi talents, and maybe I'm a bit biased, but I think she totally owned the dance floor.  After a bit of fun, they pulled the warm up balls back and out hit some balls around to stay warm and loose.

Party Lights

The lights did come back on and play got under way.  Louisville came out and played good ball in the first set, this one was never really in much doubt.

Things did get a bit more tense in the second set.  DePaul got in on the block party at the net with some good blocking.  The Cards' passing got a bit erratic in the second set, and that, of course, just throws the whole offense out of whack.  When that happens you get things like Defensive Specialist Haley Pouliezos having to take attack attempts, then you get a DS with a statistical -1.000 attack percentage, and it just ends up being a bad scene all around.  Of course, Haley was doing what she does, which is whatever is necessary to try to keep the ball in play and keep the Cards moving forward.  That hit didn't work out for the best, but, really, it was a broken up play and she did a great job even getting a shot at it.  With six digs in the match Haley contributed well.  This is a good lesson that its not all about hitting percentages.

After the set break...well, let's just say that we got the win.  DePaul had the lead a couple of the times during the set, and neither team ever lead by more than 3 points.  Another one where it wasn't pretty, but the VolleyCards dug down and got the job done.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

The KFC Yum! Center facilities folks were probably glad the party ended when it did.  They had a scant few hours to get the volleyball/basketball setup (the awesome volleyball Sport Court gets laid down on top of the basketball court) out of the way so Carrie Underwood's crew could get in the place today and setup for her concert tonight.

Party favors

What do we get to take away from this party?  Well, we have another example of the Cards digging down and not giving up.  Beyond that, I don't know that there's a whole lot to be learned from this one. I'm sure Anne Kordes, Lee Maes, and Melissa Stark-Bean will have specific things to deal with, but for us as fans, I think the best thing we can do is be glad we got the win and be ready to come back for more play.

Where's the next party?

Sunday afternoon at 2pm back at the KFC Yum! Center versus Notre Dame.  Debbie Brown can always be counted on to get the best from her team, but they are struggling.  They were 7-5 coming into this weekend, but most of their losses have come against a brutal non-conference schedule (#1 UCLA, #3 Nebraska, #18 San Diego and #2 USC).  It took them all 5 sets to knock off an also-struggling Cincinnati Bearcats team last night, so we should be able to keep to our winning ways, but you can never overlook the Irish at the wide net.