Indiana Hoosiers women's volleyball

Yeah, tough beginning to conference play for Maryland.

They start with Purdue, Indiana, and Nebraska.

Not fun.

Yeah, three of the top four or five teams in the conference.

And Indiana is up now, ranked top 15, I believe.

I think they moved up to 15th.

But, yeah, they – They've also had to deal with their top two kills leaders, Haley Melby and Sydney Bryant, did not play against Indiana.

So you don't really know who is going to be in the lineup for them coming up when they visit Lincoln.

She can make you forget about a lot of your problems because she can put the ball down from all over the court.

So I think kind of those three, four teams, Indiana is going to be good.

Oregon showed that they really pushed Wisconsin and say for a bad call.

had one of the sets in the, I think the third set that they, they, they were right in there with the Badgers in Madison.

Mm-hmm

... who he's coaching with now at Wisconsin, and Kelly coached in our Muncie Indiana volleyball program that, that Wes Lyon and myself were the directors of, and but I was in charge of hiring coaches and, and figuring out what the pay was gonna be for these coaches.

Ooh.

So every year I'd have about a 45-minute negotiation period with Sheffield, because, uh, he, he always wanted more money and was trying to leverage, you know, what, what he could do.

Mm-hmm

... that trained and developed talent, uh, I'll never be able to repay him for what he did, uh, here at, at, at Purdue.

And then he took a year off and was down with the Indy Ignite, the pro team, uh, in Indianapolis, and then, uh, his buddy Sheffield called and said, um, "We'd like you to come up here.

My assistant coach is gonna become our general manager," and, and, and different things, and it just seemed to be a great fit-

They had to play against the reigning champions, Texas A&M, who were ranked number eight at the time.

They had to play number 21, Indiana, Arizona State, number eight, Stanford.

So that's four ranked teams in 10 games, which is just kind of a brutal way to kick off your season.

Yeah, and when you're trying to figure out your depth pieces, like finding...

For them to come out of that hard schedule with just one loss to a top six Wisconsin team is kinda wild, right? They have had the same resume, kind of, as SMU, but I think has the edge in a couple of key wins.

Louisville defeated a top eight Texas A&M team, a top 16 Indiana team, swept a top 18 TCU team, a team that f- SMU fell to, swept a top nine team, a team that SMU won in five sets to, and then defeated a top 15 Creighton team.

So now I think this weekend, the top five showdown on Sunday between Louisville and Kentucky that we'll get to later in this podcast, uh, will teach us a lot more about what the Cardinals team is capable of and how they've grown throughout this preseason to prepare them for not only ACC play, but the NCAA tournament, if we're being honest.

So Louisville, I'm proud of you.

I wanna see something completely different than what we saw against Kentucky, and that was a home game, you know? So now you go to Lincoln in a hostile environment, I'm really curious how this team responds.

Gonna stick with the North Carolina teams.

NC State versus number 21, Indiana, on Saturday in Conway, South Carolina at 2:00 PM.

NC State has one more chance now to add a major non-conference win before ACC play begins, and this one is against a ranked Indiana team.

I was like, I need a lot more volleyball first.

Yes, and there will be, and actually I just found out, I'm like, 'cause Rutgers is the Big's 10 school that's closest to us, um, I found out I'm gonna be taking my daughter to the Indiana-Rutgers game, um, with one of the high school teams that I help volunteer coach.

So I'm excited to get more top ranked team volleyball love, and I just-

Good

And then last but not least, women's volleyball.

They took a 0-3 loss to number 21, Indiana.

Fought a hard third set, but then on Friday, they recovered and got one of the most dominant wins in recent history against Eastern Illinois, 3-0 dub.

And they hit over 500 for the first time in 15 years in a single game.

So, yeah, coming back and dominating after that loss to Indiana.

Yeah.

Not bad.

Yeah, that's really good to see, especially from volleyball after getting a little bit destroyed by Indiana.

... come in and watch us play.

I don't think it makes sense to have Indiana come up here for their matches when they could've played, you know, an hour and 45 minutes away.

Maybe, maybe put a day in between.

You know, I think that's always-

Yeah.

Have a day in between and, and do these events to where more home, more teams are playing at home.

Indiana was sold out-

Yep

Their lone loss was to Wisconsin during the opening weekend where they also beat Texas A&M.

They followed up the AVCA first serve tournament with a sweep over No. 16 Indiana, and then they swept Dayton, and they followed that up with two more sweeps.

TCU, it was kind of a slow start for the Cardinals, but they were able to settle in.

Seemed like Kalissa Blackshear kind of was the catalyst for the Louisville offense to get going.

Look at some of the sweeps.

Even the Texas A&M match, which they won in four, they didn't allow the Aggies to be able to battle their way back.

They swept Indiana.

They swept TCU.

On a different note, Texas A&M continues to struggle.

They lost to Purdue and Indiana this week.

But I don't think anybody should be surprised about that.

Never forget when the one person voted them number one in the AVCA preseason poll.