As Todd Chamberlain walked off the Worthen Arena court, having one of his best offensive performances during his four-year career was not the main thing on his mind.
Instead, the outside attacker was more concerned about what went wrong Saturday.
Despite Chamberlain's career-high 20 kills, the No. 13 Ball State University men's volleyball team lost its season opener to then-No. 4 Stanford 30-20, 32-30, 30-22 with a record 3,729 people in attendance.
"We realized what we did wrong," Chamberlain said. "It wasn't like they just beat us. We made errors. We beat ourselves at points. Everything we did wrong we fix."
In the loss, Chamberlain -ยก- a preseason all-conference selection - became the third Ball State player during the rally scoring era to have at least 20 kills in a three-game match. He was the only Ball State player, though, to have more than seven kills against Stanford.
Coach Joel Walton said Chamberlain was good offensively, but the team's offense struggled because of Stanford's passing and digging ability.
"There wasn't anyone on our team that I thought that was totally on top of their game," he said. "Playing a team like Stanford, everything got magnified. We had to have two shots to win rallies instead of one."
Stanford out-hit Ball State .314 to .179, including a .464 attack percentage in the final game.
Entering the match with a career .231 attack percentage, Chamberlain finished with a team-high .410 attack percentage against Stanford.
Walton said setter Ethan Pheister set the right amount of attacks to Chamberlain during the match but struggled to set his two left outside attackers.
"There were a lot of balls he set to our left side that we had problems really hitting good shots," Walton said. "Ethan's location wasn't great."
Chamberlain said the offense wasn't working at its full efficiency. He also said it's common for teams in their season opener to have these problems.
"We have a lot of new guys out there, and we were still kind of mixed up on what position people are going to be playing," Chamberlain said. "It is to be expected, but it sucks doing it in front of this many people."
In addition to having two new starters from last season's team that advanced to conference championship match, middle attacker Matt McCarthy did not play because of a shoulder injury.
McCarthy - an all-conference player - not being in the lineup affected Ball State because of the intangibles he brings to the team, Chamberlain said.
"It did hurt us," Chamberlain said. "I feel more comfortable with him out there."
With this loss, Ball State ended its three-match home winning streak against West Coast teams.
It was Stanford's fourth win against a nationally ranked team. The Cardinal also moved up one spot to No. 3 in the new coaches poll released Monday.
Chamberlain said he is not concerned about the loss because it is early in the season.
"[Stanford] did what we expected them to do," he said. "It was what we talked about before hand but lacked the ability to stop."
Click here to see the Daily News/WCRD post-game extra from men's volleyball vs. Stanford
(Watch in high quality mode for better performance)
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
