With the chance to host the conference tournament at stake, themen's volleyball team stumbled to a 3-1 loss Friday at OhioState.
Ball State rebounded Saturday with a 3-0 victory at Findlay tosecure the second seed in the Midwestern Intercollegiate VolleyballAssociation tournament. Ball State (20-8, 12-4 MIVA) faces theOilers again at home Saturday in the first round of thetournament.
BSU stayed within two points of the Buckeyes before Ohio Statepulled away in games one and two. Head coach Joel Walton said histeam got off to a slow start, but he gave credit to the Buckeyes'defense.
"Ohio State did a good job blocking us early on," Walton said."To stay as close as we did hitting the percentages we were hittingis kind of remarkable. I'm not sure exactly how we were scoring ourpoints."
The Cardinals were able to gain momentum in the third game witha pair of late-game blocks and won the 30-24. But they couldn'tsustain the charge and lost the fourth game 30-24, ending thematch.
"It was nice to see our guys rebound in game three," Waltonsaid. "In game four, we kind of got back into the same thing wherewe didn't pass very well. We got out of (our offensive)system."
Had the Cardinals beat the Buckeyes, they would have won theregular season MIVA crown and hosted the post-season tournament.Ohio State beat Quincy on Saturday, locking up the top seed. IfBall State wins its quarterfinal match against Findlay, it headsback to Ohio State for the MIVA semifinals and finals.
"We're frustrated," senior outside attacker Jary Delgado said."It's disappointing because we wanted to bring the tournament here.We thought we had a pretty good shot at winning."
Delgado said Ohio State's offense forced the Cardinals intoerrors that seemed to compound, allowing the Buckeyes to pull awaylate in the games.
"We battled with them halfway through (games), but then theystarted getting runs where we couldn't stop them," Delgado said."We kept making error after error. Then we got mad, which probablycaused us to make more errors."
Though disappointed with the loss, Delgado said the Cardinalsplayed well the next night at Findlay. They won 30-22, 30-21, 30-25and hit .463. Delgado said the team has to forget about the missedopportunity at Ohio State and start preparing for thetournament.
"The win put us in good shape for next week and for thetournament, too," Delgado said. "We were pretty focused. Weaccomplished a lot of things and had less errors. I think we willbe more confident now."
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