LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Louisville traveled all the way to Milwaukee to begin a new volleyball season and found its old one waiting for it.
You would think eight months and 400 miles ought to be enough to get away from a bad memory.
Apparently not.
There was Texas A&M on the other side of the net Friday night at Fiserv Forum, wearing the additional distinction of defending national champion, which Louisville had inadvertently helped it become.
Last December, the Cardinals had the Aggies down two sets to none in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Texas A&M then won three straight, ended Louisville's season and didn't lose again.
So naturally, somebody decided these two should open the next season against each other.
And naturally, Louisville won the first two sets again.
At this point, even people who don't believe in ghosts might have started checking the building.
Then Texas A&M won the third set. Oh, no. Not this again.
"We've seen that song and dance before," Louisville coach Dan Meske said.
The Cardinals had. Fortunately, they apparently had forgotten the steps. Chloe Chicoine made sure of it.
The senior outside hitter had eight kills in the fourth set, Louisville won it 25-21, and the No. 7 Cardinals opened the season by beating No. 8 Texas A&M 25-20, 25-23, 20-25, 25-21.
No fifth set. No reverse sweep. No repeat performance.
Just a 1-0 volleyball team that, for one night anyway, got to rewrite the last page of the previous season.
Actually, that's not quite right.
Meske didn't see this as a rewrite of last season. He saw it as the first statement of this one.
"We're not bringing any of that baggage with us," he said. "It's a new team. This team's 1-0, and this team played its first ever match together."
It's one of the advantages of having a new team. It hasn't had time to acquire much baggage.
Nerves were another matter.
Meske admitted he was tight before the match. So was his team. Louisville wanted this one badly enough that wanting it had begun to become part of the problem.
So Meske turned to Jessica Drapp.
Drapp is a senior who served only a couple of times Friday. Meske calls her the "culture queen of the program." At serve-and-pass before the match, he gave her an assignment considerably more important than anything that would appear in the box score.
Loosen these people up.
Drapp took control of the aux cord.
"This is volleyball," she said. "We've been playing this since we were four years old. It's supposed to be fun."
Asked afterward what she'd played, Drapp hesitated.
"Oh gosh," she said. "Explicit."
Apparently it worked.
Chicoine, of course, was around for the old ending. She appeared particularly determined not to sit through it again.
She finished with 19 kills on 38 attacks, made only three errors and hit .421. She added nine digs and was named MVP of the opening match of the AVCA First Serve.
Eight of those kills came in the fourth set.
Asked afterward about putting the team on her back, Chicoine objected.
"I wouldn't say that I put the team on my back," she said.
The statistics are entitled to their own opinion.
But Chicoine had a point.
She credited setter Nayelis Cabello, with whom she said she had spent the past year building a connection. And she pointed to Payton Petersen, making her first career start at libero.
"Peyton is super steady, if you all know her, and she got fiery," Chicoine said. "I think that really got us going."
Petersen finished with 23 digs. Cabello ran the offense with 45 assists, nine digs and four kills.
And they weren't alone.
Kentucky transfer Brooke Bultema had 11 kills on 20 attacks and hit .350 in her Louisville debut. Chloe Meester, after redshirting last season, had 11 kills in her first college match.
Louisville finished with 65 digs to Texas A&M's 41 and 57 kills to the Aggies' 48. The Cardinals hit .241 and held Texas A&M to .152.
Those numbers also reflected a philosophical change.
Meske said Louisville spent too much time rallying last season. He wants this team attacking to finish points — what he called a "Terminator mentality."
"We're going for it," he said.
That mentality was tested after Louisville dropped the third set.
The Cardinals had fallen behind 8-3, pulled within 12-11, then watched Texas A&M pull away for a 25-20 win.
It looked familiar.
Meske said it didn't feel familiar.
"I was there last year," he said. "It just felt different."
What he noticed was the way his players looked at each other. The eye contact. The confidence.
"At no point did I feel any panic," he said.
Bultema had another way of describing it.
She joined Louisville in January and spent the spring and summer training with a team that was changing personnel, changing roles and, in some ways, changing its approach.
All that work, she said, had earned them the opportunity to "just compete and play free."
"We didn't execute everything we wanted to perfectly," Bultema said. "But I thought we just played free."
She compared it to studying for a test. By test day, the preparation is over. You've done what you can. Then you take it.
Louisville passed a pretty good one Friday.
Texas A&M wasn't at full strength. NCAA Tournament MVP Kyndal Stowers was injured during pregame warmups and scratched shortly before first serve. Meske said Louisville was surprised by her absence and credited the Aggies for adjusting quickly.
Louisville wasn't inclined to apologize. It had spent eight months with the memory of two sets won and three sets lost against Texas A&M. Friday, it got two sets up again. This time it finished the job.
"It's a new team," Meske said.
And now it's 1-0. Next up: No. 6 Wisconsin on Saturday.
Baggage not required.
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