U of L volleyball rallies to beat Marquette in five sets to move into the region semi's

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville volleyball had a lot of experience with five set matches. But most of it wasn't very good.

They overcame those five set problems by rallying from a two sets to one deficit to take down Marquette and advance to a 5th consecutive region semifinal. The final score was 21-25, 25-11, 23-25, 25-19, 15-12.

U of L had gone 1-5 in matches that went the distance during the regular season. Of course, those five losses all came against top ten opponents.

"We're excited to be moving on to the Sweet 16, and we had to earn it. Huge credit to Marquette - they had a great season, and the Big East is no joke. We played Creighton earlier in the year at their place, and that was a great match, we were really fortunate to win in four, and then Marquette gave us absolutely everything we could handle today, and more. Big credit to Tom Mendoza, I've known their coach for a long time, and [he is] a great offensive mind," said Louisville head coach Dan Meske. "They ended at .270 for the match, but for most of the match were hitting close to .400. They just had a great game plan against us that I felt like we were chasing a lot to catch up, and it's a huge credit to our players. The grit - that's the biggest word that we talked about in the locker room is grit - we just showed a lot of grit in that match. I feel really fortunate. 77 kills in a match is probably a record for us. Huge shout out to these two, Payton Petersen had 19 kills, Chloe Chicoine 28 kills a career record. But, more so than just the stats, just the way that they compete. I feel so fortunate as a coach to have such great competitors and great people to watch them keep getting better and keep battling together, it was really cool. I kept looking Chloe in the eye and kept saying, "Good things are about to happen because we've got you on the court," so good things happen. Great match, we're very, very fortunate to have won it. I'm really excited for the Sweet 16. We are beyond excited to potentially be hitting the road to the Sweet 16 and see who we get to play. We get to practice on [Monday], and we can't wait."

Louisville is now 26-4 in the first year with Meske as the head coach. They will head to Lincoln, Nebraska for the region semifinals next weekend. They will face either Texas A&M or TCU while top seeded Nebraska will play Kansas in the other semi.