The USF volleyball team almost pulled out the first and third sets against Louisville in a 23-25, 14-25, 23-25 loss before a loud crowd of 400 at the USF Recreation Center.

“I thought we did a lot of things well tonight that put us in a position to steal sets from Louisville and we just crumbled right there at the end,” USF head coach Claire Lessinger said. “That's frustrating because when you look on paper, they statistically beat us but we were pretty darn good. We were right there.”

Freshman outside hitter Valerie El Houssine led the Bulls with a match-high 18 kills and came up with five in a first set USF tied at 22.

“You can look out and see which ones have fire in their eyes and it was Val tonight,” Lessinger said. “I thought she had a heck of a match.”

Lessinger was concerned about Louisville's kill specialist heading into the match and USF did a pretty good job of containing Lola Arslanbekova. The Big East Preseason Player of the Year was second in the nation in kills per set (5.03) going into Friday and the Bulls held her to 13 and a zero hitting percentage in the first set.

“I like how we were playing against her,” Lessinger said. “She got her big kills, but we started making some good adjustments on our block setup against her and I thought we started running down some balls.”

Louisville (17-6, 9-1 in Big East) kept its rhythm on offense throughout the match because Emily Juhl was able to post 10 kills and record a .500 hitting percentage.

“We couldn't stop her on the right side. That was the killer,” Lessinger said.

Kayla Walton also stepped up on the offensive end for USF with 10 kills and Shelbie Dailey paced the attack with 34 assists. USF's Achilles heel, however, was missed opportunities when it had chances to put sets away late.

“It was disappointing to say the least because we were so close and didn't do the right things at the right times to steal one,” Lessinger said.

USF (9-13, 5-4) has a chance to bounce back quickly with another home match Sunday against Cincinnati at 2 p.m.