YPSILANTI, Mich. -- The first day of Kelly Cochran's life as a20-year old turned out to be the best of her volleyball career.
Cochran's match and career-high 22 kills helped Ball State(11-6, 5-1) end the Eagles (11-7, 6-1) seven-game winning streakwith a 3-1 (19-30, 30-15, 30-24, 30-24) victory.
"I'd like to figure out a way to make every match night herbirthday," head coach Randy Litchfield said.
Previously, Cochran has been inconsistent at her outsideattacker position, so Litchfield is hoping her birthday performancewill be a sign of things to come.�
"Kelly is an awesome volleyball player but she's been veryinconsistent," Litchfield said. "I guess what I'm hoping for isthis match really boosts her up."
Cochran also had a career-high .439 hitting percentage and saidher performance was overdue, but helps her confidence.
"It's definitely a high bar where you can see your potential anddefinitely strive for that every game from here on out," Cochransaid.
Ball State started off the match much like it played againstCentral Michigan the previous night, with poor defense. The Eaglesoverpowered the Cardinals with a .457 hitting percentage and 20kills compared to the Cardinals .108 hitting percentage and 11kills.
"Just an identical defensive performance but against a betterteam, so we lost and lost in a big way," Litchfield said.
Somehow though the team was able to turn momentum around in thethree-minute break and never trailed in the second game. They alsoupped their hitting percentage to .371 and allowed Eastern to hitonly .125.
"They were highly emotional and to sustain emotion like that isreally hard," Litchfield said about the team's turnaround. "So justby switching sides of the net, it felt like there was achange."
Senior Stephanie Keller was able to put the first game, in whichshe had six digs, behind her and finish the match with aseason-high 33 to help rebound the Cardinals defense.
"We were kind of struggling that first game so I just made up mymind, hands down no matter where this ball goes I'm going to make amove for it," Keller said. "We knew we were better then that and wepretty much beat ourselves the first game."
Ball State strives to hold teams under their average hittingpercentage each game and they did that against Eastern.�
"It's just amazing to bet that we let them hit 46 percent ingame one and then by the end of the night we had them under theiraverage," Litchfield said. "That shows a lot of guts in games two,three and four."
Juniors Sarah Obras and Kristin Westhof also finished the matchwith double-digit kill totals of 17 and 10, respectively.
Ball State has now won their fifth straight match and is ahalf-game behind Eastern in the Mid-American Conference West.
"I think we're a great, well rounded team," Cochran said. "Wecan step onto the court now with the confidence that we're able tocompete against higher teams in this conference."
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