Baylor Volleyball's Season Ended in Sweet 16, Louisville Win 3-0
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Baylor volleyball finished their season in the Sweet 16 against Louisville, falling in a 3-0 bout with the top-seeded Cardinals in the KFC Yum! Center.
The Bears (25-7) fell to UofL (29-2) in three – 25-23, 25-16, 25-17.
Ranked 17th by the AVCA, the 15th overall seed and seeded fourth in the regional, BU took the No. 4 ranked, fourth-seeded and No. 1 regional seed to the wire in the first set and fought for the next two but couldn’t close.
The Cardinals have swept each of their last six opponents and move into the Elite Eight to face Oregon on Saturday.
It was BU’s seventh-straight NCAA Tournament appearance, 11th overall, and fourth-straight Regional Semifinal appearance. Baylor is now 20-11 in postseason matches including an NCAA record of 15-11. The Bears are 12-7 in the NCAA Tournament under head coach Ryan McGuyre.
BU is one of just seven teams who reached the Regional round in the past four years, joined by Florida, Louisville, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas and Wisconsin.
Carlson was named the AVCA’s Southwest Region Freshman of the Year on Tuesday, while McGhee was named first-team All-District by the organization. Carlson, Talbert and Harrison were each named Honorable Mention.
Mallory Talbert got a hot start in the first set with four kills while Elise McGhee, Lauren Harrison and Allie Sczech each registered four.
The second set had both Elise and Harrison get three kills while Lauren Briseño dug seven balls.
In the third frame, Harrison dug three balls and Kara McGhee and Allie Sczech went up for a block together. Mallory Talbert and Elise McGhee each got two kills.
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“Congrats to Louisville. They played a great match, and they were definitely the steadiest from start to finish. I am not sure if I felt like we were ever in control, I thought we were competitive at moments and a lot of moments not. I thought we had opportunities in that first set that our whole team realizes that we would love to get back. That changes the course of the match. At the end, we are hopeful that the best versions of ourselves always comes out in these matches. But we also know that we train so maybe the worst version of ourselves is still competitive and better than other teams’ best. I saw some good individual moments from a lot of players. I just didn’t feel like we were as adhesive as a team unit as I wanted to be. At this level, every cylinder has to be firing for the most part. Again, it probably wasn’t just one player or one play here and there. It seems like we only had five cylinders clicking in all of these rallies and maybe had a hiccup here and there. Offensively, Louisville attacked us well, and I thought we got some touches, but they covered well. We needed to be a little bit better at our side out game. It was just not strong enough. We had chances to go back there and serve. We could score some points when we were getting some aces or got them out of system. We weren’t winning enough of the long rallies and then the side out phase created some gaps for us to catch up on.”