LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Perfection carries weight. Trying to do something right, time after time, without faltering, without letting your eye drift, without thinking about your own perfection, well, it's nearly impossible. At some point, you not only square off against opponents, but against perfection itself.
That's why we don't see it very often, in anything.
The University of Louisville volleyball team is chasing it, and the Cardinals began their final ascent of that rarest of summits on Friday night at L&N Federal Credit Union Arena on the U of L campus when they began NCAA Tournament play against Illinois Chicago in front of a sellout crowd of 993 fans.
There wasn't much drama. Louisville clicked off three quick set victories in 90 minutes, advancing to face Ball State at 6 p.m. Saturday night with wins of 20-11, 20-15, 25-11.
This group smiles a lot, seems unperturbed by the pressure of their situation, and, most of all, keeps winning.
"I think we allow the pressure to come in just a little bit to use it as something to like, fight for even more," Louisville outside hitter Claire Chaussee said. "I think we turn the pressure into just like fighting for each other and being just relentless against whoever we're playing, basically playing against a faceless opponent so that we never treat anyone like they're lower than us, right?"
Right. Sure. You're the one who is 29-0. A time may come when the moment weighs on this team, but it hasn't come yet, and the Cardinals have been tested by some of the top teams in the nation.
It's a group that has fun on the court, that doesn't at all appear to be carrying any kind of added burden. At one point, redshirt junior Aiko Jones was playing air guitar coming out of a timeout. "Focused fun," the Cardinals call it. That's one foundation.
"It's been crazy all season for all of us, all the stuff that we've been doing all year," outside hitter Anna DeBeer said. "That's obviously a lot for our team and a lot of new history in the making. So I think we've done a really good job the whole year, just not really worrying about the distractions and focusing on us. I mean, we're going to have all that pressure. The target is on our back and I think we've gotten, I don't want to say used to it, but we have one really good way of handling that and I think that's going to take us far in the tournament."
Another thing that could carry them is balance. It's something coach Dani Busboom Kelly had to remind them about during the only close moment of the match, in the second set UIC tied the score at 18-18 after a few hitting errors by the Cardinals.
Busboom Kelly called timeout, spoke with her players, they came out of the huddle smiling and went on to win 5 of the next 7 points, and the set. Mini-crisis averted.
"We had that spot in game two, we made three or four hitting errors in a row on first ball and that's pretty uncharacteristic for us," Busboom Kelly said. "But at the same time, it was actually OK to have some of that in this first game and to get some of that out of our system. You know, we've been balanced all year so I really challenged (setter) Tori (Dilfer) at the break in between games two and three to balance out our offense, and she did a great job. You had Claire (Chaussee) and (Anna) DeBeer with a ton of attempts and nobody else was in double digits. So you can see she did an awesome job of getting everybody involved."
UIC knew it was in for a challenge, playing a top-seeded team. And Louisville never gave it much room for inspiration. And that has been a hallmark of this team this season. It doesn't like to lose sets, or give opponents hope.
"When they had zero attack errors in the first set," UIC coach Justin Ingram said, pinpointing the moment when things looked most difficult. Louisville had eight in the second set, "to get a little bit more human," he said, "some of it was our defense, but credit Louisville in the third set, siding out at 100%. They were terrific."
Great teams lift their level of intensity when the postseason rolls around. But if you have a team that is unbeaten, how does that work? Does it happen with them?
"It's a little funny," Busboom Kelly said. "We had a couple practices this weekend, some drills I was like, 'This is almost like too hard like we need to turn it down.' You know, that's a sign of a great team, though. They had a great week of practice and you could not tell that it was the end of the season. I've heard other coaches across the country say oh, nobody wants to practice right now, or we don't have any motivation and you know, we're having some insane practices. So that's just the mentality and again, knowing what they want and knowing what it takes to get there."
I tried to tee Busboom Kelly up to take credit for this maturity, ability to withstand pressure and focus in the midst of hoopla. A former coach in another sport at Louisville, Rick Pitino, used to say "praise is poison," yet this team has seemed to let it pass without poisonous results.
"I'm really, really lucky this year. Just our team has great leadership and great maturity and they knew what they want wanted from the beginning of the year. There's never been a time I had to motivate them or our staff felt like we had to do something special or do something different. I think having fifth-year seniors and the COVID year, you see that across the country, a lot of the best players are back and that's helped teams be really composed and mature and we are certainly benefiting from that. But I think it really just comes down to knowing what they want and understanding that this is a really great opportunity."
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