No. 1 seed Volleyball Sweeps Memphis to Gain Final
November 21, 2004 | Women's Volleyball
Nov. 21, 2004
Bing Sun had a match-high 13 kills and five blocks to lead the No. 1 seeded University of Louisville Cardinals to a 30-19, 30-16, 30-24 win over Memphis to advance to the championship match of the ChevronTexaco Conference USA Volleyball Championship Saturday evening in Cardinal Arena.
The Cardinals improve to 26-2 while Memphis finishes their season at 27-10. U of L will meet the winner of the Cincinnati/Marquette match. The championship game is 8 p.m. Monday evening.
U of L outblocked the Tigers 15.5 to 2.5 and out-hit them .375 to .047. U of L has not been outblocked in 28 straight matches. Jennifer Hoffman is a big reason why that streak reamined alive. She had a match-high seven blocks and hit .727 with eight kills on 11 swings and no errors.
"The height differential we have really doesn't matter until everything else is clicking like passing," said Leonid Yelin, U of L coach and the 2004 C-USA Coach of the Year.
In the first game U of L used blocking and strong hitting in the comeback against Memphis. Down 11-9 in the early going, U of L hit .412 and had five blocks and three aces to quell the Memphis momentum. The Cardinals had a 15-5 run and cruised to a 30-19 win. Ustymenko had five kills on 11 attacks and no errors to lead the Cardinals. Memphis hit .089 paced by Nancy Nellans five kills.
"I didn't think we played particularly well in the first game," said Yelin. "But when our blocking got going I knew we were going to be ok,"
The Cardinals popped out to 15-7 lead early in the second game and forced a Memphis timeout. Seeking to chill the Cardinal momentum, the timeout sparked a U of L 7-1 run and put the game out of reach for the Tigers. U of L had seven blocks and hit .333 while Memphis had four more hitting errors than kills. Two straight aces by Jennifer Craven gave U of L the 30-16 win.
In the final game U of L fell behind 8-6 before going on 7-0 run to go up 13-8. Memphis scrabbled back and got to within two at 22-20 but were outsocred 8-5 down the stretch. Every mmeber of the U of L roster saw plauing time in the final set.
"I got such good production out of our veteran players that I was able to get our younger players some playing time in a competitive hard-fought match," said Yelin.
Freshman Svetlana Dukule came off the bench for six kills. Ana Yartseva, who is second in the country in hitting percentage, hit .800 with four kills on five attacks and no errors. Memphis was led by Nancy Nellans' 12 kills.
