University of Louisville
Pacific
Volleyball Falls to Pacific 3-1
December 01, 2001 | Women's Volleyball
Dec. 1, 2001
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Jennifer Joines had 22 kills and seven blocks to lead Pacific to a 3-1 win over Louisville in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at the Kentucky International Convention Center Saturday.
Pacific advances to the Sweet Sixteen with the 24-30, 30-26, 30-19, 30-22 win. They will find out their next opponent on Sunday afternoon. Louisville finishes its season at 26-7. It was the final game for four Cardinal seniors, all of whom had a starting role.
"This is a special group of people," said U of L head coach Leonid Yelin. "I want to talk about Emily Roberson and Lesley Drury who were two of our local kids who helped glue this team together that comes from all over the world yet played as one. When I recruited them, looking back, I didn't realized I had four starters who developed into wonderful Division I players."
In the first game, the Cardinals were just a bit sluggish, falling behind 4-1. A spate of Pacific errors and a hot hand in Cardinal hitting helped Louisville make up the margin. After tying 10, U of L went on a 6-1 run. Now down four points, Pacific's Courtney Miller had three straight kills to help the Tigers stay close. When U of L rebuilt the lead to five, Gibson-McHugh used her last timeout trailing 20-15 but Pacific would get no closer, falling 30-24. Mercer and Percan each had five kills as the Cardinals hit .310. Pacific's Miller had five kills.
"I was worried that we would not have enough time to recover after playing five games last night, said Yelin. "We were so close to getting done in three last night which would have saved our legs. We seemed fine after the first game."
The teams see-sawed between leads in the second game. When the Tigers finally opening a 24-19 lead, Louisville called timeout. Managing to put together a modest streak to get to within two at 24-22 and Gibson-McHugh called time out to reset. However, the Cardinals couldn't close the margin and despite holding off game point once, a Joines kill ended the comeback at 30-26. Despite Louisville hitting .349, the Cards were outhit by Pacifics .450. Joines had eight kills and two blocks.
"They didn't do anything different as much as we slowed down and didn't have the legs," said Yelin,
After tying at seven in the third game, Pacific embarked on a 13-4 run that put the Cards deep in the hole. Misty Swails came alive, notching eight of her kills in that game as Pacific hit .320 with 21 kills on 50 attacks. Louisville only converted nine times on 47 attacks. "Not to take anything away from Pacific, but we beat a better team last night in Georgia Tech," said Yelin.
In the final game, Louisville dug deep and built a two-point lead at 8-6 on a pair of errors by Joines. The lead changed hands at 11 and 12 before Pacific started scoring in bunches and built a seven-point lead at 23-16. Misty Swails had three of her 14 kills and an ace coming down the stretch for the win.
Sonja Percan had 20 kills, with Mercer adding 17 and three blocks for the Cardinals. Pacific's Courtney Miller added 14 kills and Jamie Hamm had 19.
"This is a great team and all they have to do is stick together next year and great things will happen. They have an overload of talent, they will just need to stay close as a team, " said Roberson.
