Volleyball Drops 3-1 Contest To C-USA Foe Louisville
Oct 26, 2002 | Women's Volleyball
Oct. 26, 2002
NEW ORLEANS, La. - Lena Ustymenko had 19 kills to lead four Cardinal players with double-digit kill totals as the Tulane University volleyball team dropped a hard-fought contest to Conference USA foe Louisville 3-1 Saturday night in Fogelman Arena.
Senior outside hitter Britney Hurst had 19 kills to lead the Green Wave attack while junior libero Kalryn Daly and sophomore outside hitter Anastasia Kenon each tallied 17 digs. Tulane also tallied 14.0 team blocks, including six blocks by junior middle blocker Kim Swafford, but it was not enough to overcome the Cardinal attack.
The Green Wave came out of the gate playing tough to take game one 30-27, but the Cardinals bounced back to take the next three stanzas 30-20, 30-22, 30-18 to take the match. With the loss, Tulane falls to 14-13 on the year and 4-4 in C-USA play. Louisville, meanwhile, improves to 18-3 overall and remain undefeated in league action with a 7-0 mark.
"Louisville is a very strong team," head coach Betsy Becker said. "They have a lot of firepower and they also have solid defense. We came out on fire in game one and I felt that our team played hard throughout the evening. We started making a lot of errors and didn't adjust to what they were doing.
"We had a much better balanced attack, which is something we needed to achieve. Our blocking improved over the weekend and we have to focus on all the positives like our passing, blocking and defense. I told the team to keep believing in themselves because all of this hard work is going to pay off. They just have to keep going at it, and they will reap the benefits in the end."
Sophomore middle blocker Deva Fowler finished second on the team with 13 kills, and Swafford was next with 10. Defensively, junior right-side hitter Lauren Jones-McClain finished third on the team with 15 digs, and Hurst had 12. Hurst also posted four blocks, including two solos, as did Fowler and Jones-McClain.
Tulane played well in the early going, taking a 7-1 in game one. The Cardinals battled back to tie the score at 10-all, and went on to take a 17-15 lead. The Green Wave came right back, though, and retook the lead at 20-18. After falling behind 23-21 and 25-23, the Green Wave used a 7-2 rally to end the stanza and take game one 30-27.
Louisville took control of game two, jumping out to an 11-4 advantage, and never looked back. Tulane continued to play hard, cutting the lead five on a pair of occasions, but the Cardinals were too much down the stretch as they were able to hang on and win 30-20.
The two teams traded blow-for-blow in game three as the teams traded the first 16 points of the stanza. But with the game tied 8-all, the Cardinals went on a 13-3 rally to take a commanding 23-13 advantage. Tulane cut the lead to seven at 28-21, but that was as close as the Green Wave could get as Louisville went on to win 30-22.
Game four, however, was all Cardinals as Louisville rattled off the first seven points of the game. Tulane fought hard and played tough throughout the stanza, but Louisville cruised to a 30-18 decision.
Louisville's Bing Sun followed Ustymenko with 15 kills, followed by Benny Flynn with 14 and Anastasia Zaitseva with 12. Libero Sarah Drury tallied a match-best 23 digs, followed by Ustymenko's 17 and Zaitseva and Jennifer Craven with 11 each.
The Green Wave returns to action on Wednesday, Oct. 30 when they travel across town to take on intra-city rival UNO at 7 p.m. at the Lakefront Arena.
