Brown: Louisville volleyball falls to future ACC foe in top-5 showdown as conference realignment challenges loom

All the powers that be behind conference realignment, the ones who decided Louisville’s next regular-season meeting with Stanford in volleyball will be an Atlantic Coast Conference matchup, should have been at the KFC Yum! Center on Sunday.

They should have been forced to grab a microphone and tell the athletes who played in the five-set thriller they don’t matter. That their feelings were not considered and their class schedule was not a factor in the latest money grab that’s brought all kinds of nonsensical geographic alliances.

Sports like volleyball were not considered in the ACC’s panic move to add Stanford, California and SMU in the latest round of conference realignment. But these are the athletes who should have mattered most.

No. 2 Louisville fell from the ranks of the unbeaten after the No. 5-ranked Cardinal rallied for a 22-25, 20-25, 25-14, 25-20, 15-12 win.

The game was as intense as any of the college football games played on Saturday. U of L’s Kamden Schrand barreled out of bounds into the cheerleaders in pursuit of the ball. Outside hitter Charitie Luper nearly ran into one of the padded poles supporting the net to keep the ball in play.

From a production standpoint, it was just like any basketball game in the arena, complete with red light intros and pyrotechnic flames.

Add that to the crowd of 9,761 — the second largest in U of L history — that packed the lower bowl despite it being an NFL Sunday with U of L’s favorite former quarterback, Lamar Jackson, and the Baltimore Ravens playing just an hour and change away in Cincinnati.

“It felt like a huge event,” Stanford coach Kevin Hambly said. “It had a Final Four feel.”

The sport is growing, especially in Kentucky where Western Kentucky has been a perennial top 25 program, UK won the national title in 2020 and U of L played for the title last season.

Stanford’s McKenna Vicini, who played her club volleyball out of Lexington, is an example of just how much.

“I'm really happy to bring more awareness for other little girls who are wanting to play the sport,” Vicini said. “It's definitely growing and I just hope it keeps continuing to do so.”

These volleyball players should be treated with the respect of those who play revenue-generating sports. Instead, they’ll have to shoulder added travel burdens that aren’t asked of football and basketball teams.

Luper transferred to U of L after playing two seasons at UCLA. She was a bit surprised when she heard the ACC’s newest members would include two of her former Pac-12 rivals.

“California is pretty far, it's a little bit crazy,” Luper said. “Coming from Kentucky going all the way to California is going to be a lot mentally especially when we have school in the mix with that. So that's something that's going to take a little bit to get used to. But seeing Stanford and how they came out here today, apparently it didn't affect them.”

Or maybe it did.

The 1 p.m. start time on Sunday was actually 10 a.m. on the body clock for Stanford’s players.

U of L grabbed an early lead and maintained it throughout both of their wins in the first and second sets. The Cards seemed headed toward their eighth sweep of the season, but Stanford hasn’t won nine national championships as a program by quitting when it gets down.

The Cardinal rallied behind Caitie Baird and her 23 kills to take the next two sets and force U of L into a fifth set for just the second time this season.

Baird’s kill in the fifth set broke an 8-8 tie and Stanford finished off the victory.

Louisville, as the western-most school located in the ACC, is actually the closest trip the Cardinal will make among current league schools. It’ll take a bit more out of them physically when they venture to, say, Syracuse or Miami, in the polar extremes of the league.

Hambly said they are already trying to figure out how they can adjust while they still sport the Pac-12 emblem on their right shoulder sleeves for one last season.

He said they’re consulting with a sleep specialist, because of the time change and sports like volleyball fly commercial. Stanford’s flight back to California on Sunday had a connection so it’s going to take six hours.

“We’re going to have to figure it out as we go and we'll probably mess it up a couple of times early and then see what we can sort out,” Hambly said. “But I’d rather have a home than be out there floundering, so we'll deal with whatever comes.”

Participants in sports like volleyball deserve much better than “deal with it.”

U of L coach Dani Busboom Kelly said she hasn’t gotten any feedback yet on the possible schedule, including the speculation that Dallas and SMU could be used as a neutral site for non-revenue sports.

“It didn't start with the ACC you know, we had to add teams to keep up,” Busboom Kelly said.

Keeping up feels too much like falling behind for sports like volleyball that will have to live with the conference's decision to expand.

C.L. Brown: Louisville picked wrong side in ACC expansion. The Cardinals should have voted no

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville vs Stanford volleyball score? UofL falls to future ACC foe