University of Louisville
at East Carolina *
Volleyball Repels Pirates 3-1
October 18, 2003 | Women's Volleyball
Oct. 18, 2003
Senior Sonja Percan had 19 kills to lead the University of Louisville to a 3-1 win over East Carolina in Conference USA volleyball action Friday night.
Louisville moves to 10-4, 3-1 in Conference USA play with the 26-30, 30-24, 30-20, 30-17 win. ECU drops to 9-14 and 0-5 in the league.
East Carolina used a 6-2 run in the first game to sneak ahead of the No. 21 ranked Cardinals. Four of those points in the run were on Cardinal errors. Louisville called time out trailing 22-18 and then could not cut into the Pirate lead. ECU hit .474with just one hitting error on 38 swings and 19 kills. U of L was outblocked 3-0.
"When you are having trouble blocking you have to dig and pass to compensate for that," said Leonid Yelin. "We corrected that and we played much more to our style of play."
In the second game, U of L had a 9-1 run after trailing 10-8 to go up 18=11. ECU had a shortlived run to come within three at 17=14 on an ace by Katie Jannusch. U of L surged back to go up 26-22 and despite an ECU ace and two blocks by the Pirates down the stretch, U of L's Ana Yartseva's three kills and an ace by Jennifer Craven was enough give the Cardinals the 30-24 win. U of L revived its blocking game with three blocks to the Pirates' one. Yartseva had five kills in the set.
"Ana gave us a great lift off the bench," said Yelin. "She ended up with 12 kills and five blocks."
The Cards blasted out to a 15-4 lead in the third game and the deficit proved too much for the Cardinals. After that point, the closest the Pirates could get was 10. U of L out hit ECU .321 to .030 and had five blocks to ECU's two.
In the final game, U of L built a 18-10 lead and forced an ECU timeout. Blocking continued to be a problem for ECU hitters as the Cardinals ended the match with 14 blocks to ECU's seven. U of L's serving was also a factor with nine aces led by setter Jennifer Craven's four.
U of L plays Charlotte Saturday evening in Charlotte.
