No. 4 Louisville Beats No. 11 Kentucky in Four Sets Wednesday
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Led by 13 kills from Anna DeBeer, the No. 4 Louisville Cardinals took down No. 11 Kentucky in four sets Wednesday night, 3-1 (25-21, 25-18, 20-25, 25-16) as Kentucky closed its non-conference home schedule in front of 3,838 fans inside Historic Memorial Coliseum.
The Wildcats had two players reach double-figures scoring Wednesday night as Brooklyn DeLeye netted a team-high 17 kills to match her uniform number with three digs and a block. RS-freshman Brooke Bultema had one of her best performances as a Wildcat on Wednesday, as she netted 11 kills on 21 swings with four blocks.
Overall in the match, Kentucky was outblocked 17-7 in what was one of the most critical areas of the match six of the seven players who had a block in Wednesday night’s match for the Cards had two or more stuffs. Bultema led Kentucky with four blocks and Megan Wilson had three.
Louisville as a team hit .252 for the match and Kentucky hit .118 paced by 39 assists from senior setter Emma Grome. Molly Tuozzo made some spectacular plays, specifically early in the match as she led the Wildcats with 17 digs, one of two UK players in double figures in digs joining Eleanor Beavin, who had 13.
Kentucky will close out non-conference play Saturday night at 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2 against the No. 2 Stanford Cardinal from Palo Alto, California. The match will be televised by Paul Sunderland and Missy Whittemore.
Set One
The first set was extremely tight with the set played within a six-point window from start to finish. The Cardinals came out of the gates strong, winning five of the first seven points to take a 5-2 lead before a UK mini run cut the lead in half quickly and Kentucky’s Brooklyn DeLeye took the Wildcats to the lead with her second kill of the match to make it 8-7 UK. The lead again for Kentucky grew to two at 16-14 before a 3-0 scoring run for Louisville gave the Cards the lead and UK called for its first timeout. Following Kentucky taking an 18-16 lead, UL went on a 7-2 run to get the edge by three at 23-20 and UK burned its final timeout with Louisville two points from the set. UL sided out at 24-21 to take the opening set behind hitting .225 and multiple kills from five different players. Megan Wilson had five kills to lead all players for the set as she hit .300 but Kentucky as a team only hit .133 to push the Cards over the top.
Set Two
In the second set, Louisville broke out of a 4-4 tie and took off to the races, growing its lead to 18-11 as Kentucky called its second timeout trailing by a set-high seven points and hitting negative in the frame to that point. Louisville’s Charitie Luper hammered her fifth kill to the floor to make things 19-11 before Kentucky was able to mount its largest run of points in the set at three with Brooke Bultema hammering home a kill out of the middle to make it 19-14 and Louisville called its first timeout of the set with the lead trimmed to five, the closest UK had been since it was 14-9. After Kentucky closed the lead, the Cards slammed the door shut on the second set and won 25-18 to take a two sets to none lead over the Wildcats hitting .300 as a team and holding UK to just .145.
Set Three
In an extremely choppy and broken third set, Kentucky got on the board with a 25-20 set win that took over 40 minutes to play that had two replay reviews of extended duration that both went against Kentucky. All in all, Kentucky took advantage of several Louisville hitting errors down the stretch of the set and ballooned its lead to 24-20 and a Brooke Bultema block ended the set at 25-20 as the Wildcats got back into the match to make things 2-1 overall in the match.
Set Four
In the fourth set, Louisville rode out the match by maintaining a 5+ point lead all the way from a 7-2 advantage and hit .280 with UK hitting -.118, the first set this season UK has hit negative. Louisville took the set 25-16 to win the match.
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