CRAWFORD | Louisville volleyball, 2 years since its last ACC loss, keeps chasing perfection

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – An unusual thing happened Friday night at Louisville’s L&N Arena. The University of Louisville volleyball team dropped a set.

Now, the No. 2-ranked Cardinals still beat Virginia Tech 3-1 to improve their record to 16-1. I suppose it would be fair to cut some slack to a program that is approaching the 2-year anniversary of its last conference loss.

But U of L coach Dani Busboom Kelly isn’t cutting her team any slack. And the sold-out arena had a different vibe after the Cardinals, up 2 sets to 0, lost the third 25-20. That just doesn’t happen at home. It happened once all last season to an unranked opponent.

“I’d say this is the worst we’ve been all season,” Busboom Kelly said. “It’s just disappointing when you play like that at home. And especially when we’ve been on the road last weekend and coming back here. We’re trying to build something not only for ourselves but for this city and the volleyball community here. So I hate playing like this, especially at home. I think you just kind of lose a little bit of that momentum.”

Did I mention the Cardinals won the game?

Yes. I did. I checked. But this is the standard of Louisville volleyball, one year after putting together an unbeaten run to the Final Four. A lot of teams are chasing perfection. This team caught it last season.

Busboom Kelly knows the value of momentum in sports. And she doesn’t want her team to lose it. She doesn’t want to leave the door cracked open, even a little bit.

“We know how hard it is to be great every day. But it’s also what gets you to the Final Four,” she said. “. . . I think they (the players) understand. They have the ability to make changes. I definitely think they were disappointed in their performance.”

I mean, people were leaving the arena after the third-set loss. What? You mean this thing isn’t going to be wrapped up in a cool 90 minutes?

U of L is playing without starting All-American outside hitter Anna DeBeer. But it continues to get strong play from Claire Chausee, who led the Cardinals with 18 kills last night, and Aiko Jones and Amaya Tillman, who had 11 each. Nana Moon has stepped into DeBeer's starting slot.

On the whole, this Louisville team it has absorbed the major losses of All-Americans Anna Stevenson and Tori Dilfer and continued to proceed as one of the top teams in the nation, ranked No. 3 in the preseason, and No. 2 nationally for most of the season. It lost to Ohio State on Sept. 4, but has reeled off 11 straight wins since then.

Sometimes, though, when you have experienced what many of these players have, even winning isn’t enough.

“This was a win that feels like a loss,” Jones said. “Not because we lost a set, but because we can play so much better. We didn’t leave that game feeling proud of how we played. We didn’t leave it feeling like we defended our home court. We won. We got lucky. We could have been so much better on defense, so much cleaner on offense. We could have communicated better. And if we let teams in, they will come in and take it. Virginia Tech did that and hats off to them. They are a good team. And college volleyball is hard. But this is a win that feels like a loss, and the takeaway from that is that this is a wake-up call. People can rank us what they want to rank us and we can win and have all these things. But if we don’t go out there and play, none of that matters.”

In the end, this is how you play to sellouts every night. As I walked the concourses taking pictures, fans would come up and say, “Glad you’re here. This is the best team in town.”

And it is one of the best shows in town. But only, Jones said, when it is at the top of its game. That doesn’t mean it has to be perfect, but it does mean playing to its potential. And it means, sometimes, even on an 11-game winning streak, and a 2-year conference winning streak, with a 6-1 record this year against ranked teams and the nation’s No. 2 hitting percentage, you remain hyper focused on potential weaknesses.

“We’ll talk about it, the coaches will talk about it,” Jones said. “It's always nice to win. But it's not always nice to win like that. To win knowing you could have played better, it almost felt like we got lucky. After the game the talk was we have to come out and play our best and we have to adjust in game. I definitely didn't have my best blocking game, but I didn't adjust, I could have gotten over the net faster. . . . You have to get better as the game goes on. And as a collective, we didn't do that the way we wanted to. And that was the talk. We know what we can do, and we have to keep doing that. Because if we let teams in, they are going to take advantage of that, especially at home.

“At the beginning of this season, we met as a team. And we recognized that what happened last year does not happen. We recognized that going undefeated your entire season and losing one game is almost statistically impossible -- especially in college volleyball in the United States, that thing doesn't happen. And it was awesome that it did. But we do not and never had expected to come up this year and do the same thing. I think we recognize that you will win and you will lose. But you can always get better. And I think that is always our focus.”

Louisville will get a chance to improve quickly. It faces Wake Forest at L&N Arena on Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m.

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