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Kentucky Rallies Past No. 3 Louisville
Kentucky lost the first set 25-19 and won the next three in front of a sold-out Historic Memorial Coliseum, trading 27 attack errors for 73 kills along the way.
Kentucky, ranked fourth, lost the first set to No. 3 Louisville on Sunday afternoon and won the next three, 3-1 (19-25, 29-27, 25-21, 25-19), in front of 6,045 at a sold-out Historic Memorial Coliseum.
It was the first match between two top-five teams the building had staged, and ABC carried it. The Wildcats went in at 7-2 and the Cardinals at 10-1, and it became Kentucky's second win over a top-five team this season, after Wisconsin in Milwaukee in August.
Louisville had won on this floor in 2022 and in 2024, during a run of four straight wins over Kentucky. Kentucky took last year's meeting in five sets at the KFC Yum! Center, and Sunday was their first home win over Louisville since 2019.
The Match Turned in the Second Set
In the first set Kentucky hit .079 and Louisville hit .324, and Louisville won it by six.
In the second Kentucky hit .420 and won it 29-27, the longest set of the afternoon. Louisville hit .319 in that set, almost exactly what they had hit in the first.
Louisville did not get worse between those two sets. Kentucky's attack improved by 341 points of hitting percentage, and it stayed ahead from there, at .211 in the third and .350 in the fourth while Louisville fell to .103 in the third.
Kentucky Traded Errors for Kills
Kentucky won by accepting mistakes. They attacked 166 times to Louisville's 153 and made 27 attack errors to Louisville's 12, more than twice as many, and they killed 73 balls to 51. Those 73 kills are three of every four points Kentucky scored in a 98-point afternoon.
Brooklyn DeLeye had 22 kills on .269 with 11 digs, and Morgan Gaerte had 20 kills on .317 with four blocks. Kassie O'Brien set 59 assists, a season high.
Chloe Chicoine led Louisville with 17 kills on .356, with 10 digs and four blocks. Louisville out-blocked Kentucky 13 to 6.5 over the four sets.
Louisville head coach Dan Meske, in the Cardinals' match report on Sunday night.
Credit to Kentucky. Great crowd too. They played a great match – they played really aggressive and killed a whole bunch of balls. They were just very, very aggressive at the net. We had some opportunities to bounce back, but I thought at times, whether it was the energy or the crowd, we just got kind of soft in moments and Kentucky did not, so big credit to them. It was a back-and-forth match for the most part, but they did a lot more in big moments than we did to win the match.
Kentucky head coach Craig Skinner told Caroline Makauskas of the Lexington Herald-Leader that his team is "scratching the surface of where we can be offensively", after a match in which it killed 73 balls.
