The women's volleyball team defeated IPFW 3-0 (30-22, 30-26,30-25) in front of a crowd dominated by the IPFW men's volleyballteam.
The team made the trip down I-69 and contributed most of thenoise in Worthen Arena on Thursday night, which actually helpedmotivate the Cardinals.�
"What little lack of motivation we had, went away very quickly,"head coach Randy Litchfield said. "It was kind of satisfying seeingthem sitting down at the end of match."
As someone who grew up in Fort Wayne and also coached there forawhile, Litchfield said he also got motivated by playing them andenjoyed the victory.�
The match started with senior libero Stephanie Keller making agreat play to get the ball over for a kill on the first point,after she at first misplayed the ball.
"That play started by a mistake by Stephanie Keller on the firstcontact and she just chased down that third contact and probablyset a tone for us," Litchfield said. "It wasn't the prettiest play,but it sure showed a lot of heart."
Junior Sarah Obras, who led the team in kills with 17, agreedwith the assesment.
"I think that showed that we weren't going to give up," Obrassaid. "I think that did set the tone from there on out, that wewere going to just fight for points."
Keller went on to have a strong match, finishing with 30 digs,making her the first player in MAC history to get over 2,000 digs.She now has 2,226 career digs.
The Cardinals' strong blocking presence helped the backcourtdefense a lot, Litchfield said. Ball State finished with 14 blockscompared to the Mastodons six.
"Blocking leads to good backcourt defense, but Stephanie wasjust all over the ball tonight," Litchfield said.
With her five block assists and one solo block, junior MelissaOliver moved passed 200 blocks for her career. She was one of sevenCardinals who pitched in on the 14 team blocks.
Ball State led the entire first game, pulling further away towin 30-22. The Cardinals got it done in all areas. They had a .300hitting percentage, out-dug IPFW, 32-23, and out-blocked them5-0.
The Mastodons turned it around in game two, leading for almostall of it, but Ball State finally pulled away in the end and won30-26.
The third game was back and forth throughout but Ball State onceagain pulled away in the end. As the IPFW men's team was sittingdown the Cardinals closed the match with three straight points,capping it off with a block from Kelly Cochran and KirbyGibson.
The one problem area for the Cardinals was that they became apassive hitting team towards the end of the match, Litchfield said.After a .300 hitting percentage in game one, Ball State hit .188 ingame two and .200 in game three to finish with a .229percentage.
"I just thought we had a chance to attack their real smallblocking setter big time, and we didn't have a very good showingthere," Litchfield said.
On the other side of the ball though, the Cardinals were verystrong, out-digging the Mastodons 82-69 and holding them to a .138hitting percentage.
"I didn't want to see another team put up a near 50 percenthitting percentage against us," Litchfield said.
The Cardinals will now travel to Akron for a matchup onSaturday. If Eastern Michigan was to lose both to its matches thisweekend, Ball State would be able to take the lead in theMid-American Conference West Division with a win.
After dropping their first four conference games, Akron has wonits last two matches. Ball State's good defensive play going intothe match has Litchfield confident, though.
"I feel like we can go into tough road MAC matches and win withthat kind of defensive effort," he said.
The Cardinals have now won six straight and Obras sees the teamgetting better and better as the season goes on.
"I think we really needed to show that we can sill stayfocused," she said. "I'm just seeing so much improvement as we getdeeper and deeper in October."
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