The end was near, so near in fact that Dani Busboom Kelly was already imagining the implications.
To lose at home as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament is a fate about as hard to swallow as a pregnant porcupine, and the University of Louisville’s volleyball coach was all but resigned to it Saturday night. Her Cardinals were two points down and one point away from elimination before they survived consecutive match points and rallied to beat Northern Iowa to advance to its sixth straight Sweet 16.
“When it was 14-12, I was thinking, ‘This is it, like we just blew a top four seed, and we’re going down,’ ” Busboom Kelly said. “That’s why it was a big-time relief to win that game. I told our team before the tournament, ‘I don’t want to feel relief anymore, I want everything to be exciting.’. I went, ‘Well I’m really freaking relieved right now.’ Hopefully [there’s] more excitement later.”
Since U of L is winless in its four matches against the nation’s other No. 1 seeds – Pitt, Nebraska and Penn State — the likelihood of the home team celebrating a national championship at the KFC Yum Center on Dec. 22 would seem remote. Yet the relief Busboom Kelly felt at the end of Saturday’s match was exceeded only by the excruciating excitement that preceded it.
Before U of L completed its 26-28, 25-22, 23-25, 25-13, 22-20 comeback win, there were 14 ties and seven lead changes in the decisive fifth set. When Louisville star Anna DeBeer finally put an end to the proceedings with her 19th kill, it was the set’s ninth match point. Twice Northern Iowa committed service errors within one point of victory.
“Me personally, I’ve never played in a match that close and just that crazy,” said Charitie Luper, Louisville’s senior outside hitter.
U of L had swept Northern Iowa in September at the Yum Center, but the first two sets of that match had been decided by the minimum two points and the visitors arrived Saturday on a 21-match winning streak. Northern Iowa coach Bobbi Petersen, whose daughter Payton is a freshman on the Louisville team, has spent so much time studying U of L this season that her players were able to carry themselves with confidence they would not be surprised and could not be overwhelmed. To watch them laughing and dancing during musical interludes in the match was to see young athletes unburdened by expectations.
“I’ve never witnessed a team with that much grit and that much fearless mindset,” DeBeer said.
Louisville prevailed mostly through grim determination, resilience, a career night by middle blocker Cara Cresse and the steady contributions of Luper and DeBeer (19 kills apiece). When the match ended, DeBeer burst into tears, surprising herself with the extent of her emotions as she contemplated what could have been her last match for U of L.
“I was like, ‘Wow. I didn’t know I had that much in me,’ ” she said.
How much more Louisville may have left will be tested in the upcoming regional rounds, to be played at Freedom Hall. The Cardinals will meet Purdue in one of Thursday’s semifinals and could face Stanford for the third time this season for a spot in the final four. U of L and Stanford split the two previous matches.
“We’re pretty mentally tough, and I think we had to work on that and grow into that this year,” Busboom Kelly said. “I do believe that’s going to give us more confidence in the next round, just getting through this game when the stakes are as high. UNI is great, but a lot of people on the outside think, ‘Well that should be an easy win for Louisville.’ It’s not. So, here we’re down, to a team that everybody thinks we should beat at home, we’ve got a top four seed. So, to be feeling that pressure and come out and make some plays, like some really tough plays to win that game, I think that just shows the mental toughness that’s grown throughout the year.”
That mental toughness should have grown exponentially against Northern Iowa. The end was near, and narrowly avoided.
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This article appears in Dec 4-17, 2024.