.png){kind=logo}
Wisconsin Sweeps No. 7 Louisville
Louisville came in having beaten the defending national champions. Wisconsin came in having been swept. Eight aces and a freshman's 13 kills later, the weekend had turned all the way over.
Louisville arrived at Fiserv Forum on Saturday having beaten the defending national champions the night before. It left having lost three straight sets to a team that had itself been swept twenty-four hours earlier.
Wisconsin won 25-18, 25-20, 25-18, hit .327 and served eight aces to Louisville's one.
The match was also the first women's college volleyball game of FOX's new package, which the network says will run to 35 matches this season.
A Freshman Led the Badgers Back
Audrey Flanagan took 28 swings and put away 13 of them, more than anyone on either side. Jaela Auguste hit .615 on eight kills and Eva Travis added eight more.
Grace Egan finished with six kills, three aces and nine digs. Charlie Fuerbringer ran all of it for 33 assists and eight digs and took the match MVP award, with Anna Bardaro leading the floor on 11 digs.
Auguste's night is the one to sit with. Eight kills on 13 swings with a single error is .615, and a middle hitting that number usually means the setter is getting clean balls and the block is arriving late.
Lynney Tarnow chipped in six of her own, so five different Wisconsin players reached six kills or better. The Badgers also out-assisted Louisville 43 to 36, which is a tidier way of saying they were in system more often.
Eight aces in three sets is the kind of margin that never shows up in a hitting line. Louisville had one.
Friday Rhymed, and Louisville Got the Wrong Half
The weekend's shape is worth stating plainly. On Friday, Louisville beat Texas A&M in four sets and Kentucky swept Wisconsin in three. On Saturday the team that had been swept did the sweeping.
Wisconsin finished with 47 kills against 11 errors on 110 attempts. Louisville finished with 38 kills against 13 errors on 107 attempts, which comes to .234 and is not a bad night on its own terms.
It was a bad night against a team making eleven errors.
SI's Abbie Harris framed Friday's loss in roster terms, noting that Kentucky returned 75 percent of last season's runner-up team while Wisconsin is full of fresh faces. On Saturday the fresh faces hit .327.
Both of These Teams Have Something to Answer
Both spent last December losing to somebody who is also in Milwaukee this weekend. Kentucky ended Wisconsin's tournament run. Texas A&M ended Louisville's in the round of 16, which is the match Louisville avenged on Friday night.
That makes this a four-day tournament in which almost every result is a rematch of something, and the ones settling them are largely players who were not on the floor for the original.
Wisconsin is 1-1 and gets No. 5 Stanford on Friday at the Opening Spike Classic, an 8 p.m. start on ESPN2.
The Badgers' first sweep of 2026 came two days after their first loss. Not many teams get the answer that fast.
