By Noah Allison–

Louisville volleyball had a rude awakening to the beginning of their ACC journey. Friday night the Cards fell to Boston College 2-3 in their first conference opening loss since before joining the Big East. After fighting back from an early 0-2 deficit, U of L grinded out two straight victories to send the match to a fifth set before succumbing to Eagles.

“We have to grow up and understand the ACC is very tough and that we have to come to play from the start. You don’t go down 2-0 and expect it to come all the way back and win. We’ve got challenges on our hands,” head coach Anne Kordes said.

The Cardinals showed what they are made of when they overcame the early nerves and fought back to give themselves a real chance at winning. But the immaturity and complacency that this team is working through proved to be their downfall.

“We need to have more fight and don’t play scared. Being in the ACC we are going to go to five game matches and we need to be mentally tough. We are capable of doing it, we are in shape, but when they start pushing on us that’s when we’ve got to push back and fight harder,” red-shirt sophomore Janelle Jenkins said.

Jenkins led the Cards in kills with 18 on the match. Louisville was favored to win, especially considering there past dominance in conference play. Dating back to the Big East, Louisville had won 34 straight conference wins before losing in their first ever ACC match.

“The ACC is a dog-eat-dog type of competition; you don’t know what’s going to happen in the ACC. The underdog can beat the top dog and vice versa so we have to come out and win these matches that we are supposed to win. We were supposed to beat Boston tonight,” Jenkins remarked.

Louisville moves forward into a long conference season and now knows first hand what sort of focus they need to compete.

“The ACC is going to be a roller coaster, we are going to go up and down over and over again, and this is what we prepare for. There is no moment where you can take anything off because every team in the ACC top to bottom is good,” junior setter Katie George said.

Louisville is now 8-5 on the season and prepares for Georgia Tech on Sunday to hopefully bring their conference record to 1-1. Despite the ups-and-downs of tonight alone, Coach Kordes knows that adapting to the new level of competition will take time, but is a challenge her team is ready to take head on.

“Bottom line is at the end of the day you can’t play not to lose, and I think that we have been doing that quite a bit in some of our losses. We’ve got to go to play to win every match.” Kordes said. “Honestly, hopefully having a tough loss like this in the beginning maybe takes some of the pressure off of them and lets them just go and play. I tell you this is a much better team than what we’re showing because I see it every day in practice.”

Photo by Austin Lassell / The Louisville Cardinal