By RUSS BROWN • Photos by: UofL Athletics
The ACC has been a solid volleyball conference in recent years, but with the addition of three teams from the PAC-12, it figures to be even more challenging this season.
When ACC play began on last weekend in Sept. the league could boast about having three teams in the top five -- No. 1 Pitt, No. 2 Stanford and No. 4 UofL -- plus three others in the top 25, No. 13 Georgia Tech, No. 18 Florida State and No. 22 SMU.
“I think the ACC has turned into the best conference in the country and it’s kind of crazy,” Busboom Kelly said. “It’s been a long journey and a lot of changes, but it’s really impressive. And it will be a dogfight to win this year.”
However, for Louisville, which has been one of the premier programs in the conference under coach Dani Busboom Kelly, facing strong competition won’t be anything new. By the time their conference opener against California rolled around on Sept. 29, the Cards had played six teams ranked in the top 25 and defeated four of them.
The wins came against No. 3 Wisconsin (3-1), No. 9 Creighton (3-2), No. 11 Kentucky (3-1) and No. 15 Tennessee (3-0). UofL lost to No. 7 Penn State (0-3) and No. 4 Nebraska (0-3), its final match before starting ACC play.
“We lost to two top five opponents, so that’s not like we took bad losses,” Busboom Kelly said. “It’s just that when you get swept both times you’re a little down, but I love this team. We’ve got to figure a couple things out, but we’ve got a lot of great players and the potential to be really scary long-term. The goal is to be at our best in December and that’s why we tested ourselves early. This team has a great mix of young and old players that are still gelling, and I think we have a lot of improvement we can still make, which is exciting. We’re competing at a very high level. I think we’re in a good place, so we’ll see.”
The Cards have lived in that neighborhood throughout Busboom Kelly’s eight seasons. She has a 174-38 (.821) overall record that includes 115-18 (.865) in the ACC. Her 2021 team finished the regular season undefeated and wound up 32-1 after a 3-1 loss to No. 4 Wisconsin in the national semifinal. She has led UofL to the Final Four two of the last three seasons and has been named National Coach of the Year by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) four times.
A defeat in the final non-conference game isn’t a great way to go into the ACC season, but Busboom Kelly says there were some positives that could prove beneficial down the road.
“Our weaknesses have been shown to us, so we have a lot to work on and the ACC is tougher than it’s ever been,” she said. “At least we’ve tested ourselves and played great at times. So there’s a lot to look back on when we get into tough moments.
We’ve lost to two great teams. Hopefully we’ll have another chance to beat them later in the year.”
Senior Anna DeBeer, a team co-captain, said the players were eager to put the loss behind them, especially with a match looming against Stanford at home two days after Cal’s visit.
“Luckily it’s still early, but it’s frustrating,” she said. “We know there’s so much more in us than that. It was just one of those days we couldn’t get anything going. I think it was a really good way to learn because there’s so many things we can take away from it. It was a good match to learn from, so I see it as motivating going into ACC play.”
The elephant in the room involving the volleyball program isn’t whether the incredible success will continue, but whether it can hold onto its ultra-successful coach. Nebraska coach John Cook is 67 and his current contract runs only through 2025. Busboom Kelly, who played for Cook and was also his assistant coach for five years before leaving for Louisville, has a contract that would allow her to return to the Huskers without paying an exit fee.
“We’re going to do everything we can possibly do to keep her,” U of L athletic director Josh Heird has said. “We want her to be the coach here for as long as she wants to be here.”
With the boom in volleyball and with UofL being one of the leaders, Busboom Kelly says a new on-campus arena is a necessity. The Nebraska match drew a record 14,128 fans in the KFC Yum! Center, but due to other events in the Yum!, openings for the volleyball team are limited. The Cards are playing just seven of their 21 home matches in the Yum! They will play the other 14 at L&N Arena, which seats only 1,331.
“I think an arena is pretty important long-term,” Busboom Kelly told Tim Sullivan of Leo Weekly. “Just because if the sport is continuing to grow like this, then we’re going to be left in the dust. Because players want to play on the big stages. What we have at L&N, It’s nice. It’s not that big, but it’s nice. Obviously, the Yum! Center is big and nice. We’re going to see if there are opportunities out there. Can we do something to accommodate five or six thousand people? I don’t know what that looks like, but this program deserves for us to at least look at those opportunities. I think we’re at least to the point where we’ve got to have those discussions.”
Heird said preliminary discussions have already taken place “to elevate the program on a national stage” at Churchill Downs.
“If Dani wants to look at something,” he said, “we’re going to look at it.”
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