DEKALB, Ill. -- After having a perfect record in October, thewomen's volleyball team started November off with two roadlosses.
On Friday, Western Michigan snapped Ball State's 11-match and21-game win streak with a 3-1 victory, then Northern Illinoisdefeated the Cardinals in straight sets on Saturday.
Head coach Randy Litchfield said the team was just outplayed allover the place.
"My team has crossed that fine line from being real good tobeing real bad and we're real bad," Litchfield said.
The last few weeks in practice Litchfield sensed the poor playand even warned his team to beware of something like this, hesaid.
"You got to get players that will buy into the fact that youcan't slop it around as often as we do and expect good results,"Litchfield said. "Maybe we understand that now, I don't know."
In both matches, the Cardinals served and passed poorly, areasthat are normally their strengths.
"All of a sudden we have nobody that can handle the volleyball,"Litchfield said. "Our strengths in ... a short amount of time havegone. We can't serve, we can't pass, we can't defend and all thishappened on the road against two really motivated teams."
In their first game against Western the Cardinals never traileduntil the final two points and held at least three-point advantagesmost of the game, but Western closed the match on a 7-1 run to win30-28.
The Cardinals' 21-game win streak was the second-best in schoolhistory. Ball State did rebound in game two, closing it out on a14-5 run to win 30-22.
"The end of game one was very pivotal, we commanded most of thatgame," Litchfield said. "We answered and took game 2 and just can'thelp but think you could have been up 2-0."
As the match went on Western started blocking juniors SarahObras and Rachel Refenes, the two who were getting the mostoffense, and that helped the Broncos win the next two sets, 30-23and 30-22.
"Rachel had a great game 1 and 2, and we didn't have anybodyelse playing so what they did was start adjusting all theirblockers to Rachel," Litchfield said. "We needed some other peopleplaying tonight and didn't get it."
The story was much the same against Northern. Ball State's onlyadvantage in game one came at the 5-4 point, but Northern rolled onfrom there to a 30-21 win. Refenes had seven kills and three totalblocks in the first game.
Ball State wasn't able to rebound. The Cardinals 30-13 loss ingame two was their worst in the four years of rally scoring, andthey dropped game 3, 30-17.
Ball State had almost as many hitting errors (27) as it didkills (31) and hit only .036. Refenes finished with 12 kills andfour total blocks to lead the Cards.
Both teams appeared to have it out for the Cardinals, playingmuch more motivated than when Ball State beat them both in WorthenArena earlier this season.
"You get a chance to beat the Cardinals and beat them bad, youtake it," Litchfield said. "That's what these teams have done."
The teams also lowered the chances of Ball State getting anat-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
"In a matter of 24 hours we have put an at-large bid injeopardy," Litchfield said. "We can't afford another loss.
"The bigger issue then is we better get our act together for aleague tournament that is kicking off in a short amount oftime."
Getting back on track will begin Monday when the team returns topractice.
"Practice, quite frankly, will be used to do what I do best andthat's I'm going to kick some butt," Litchfield said.
With only three days before their next match, having to practicehard for two days comes at an inopportune time.
"It's not how you want to go into a Wednesday, Friday, Saturdayweek of competition, but we're going to do it. We're going to pay aprice on Monday and Tuesday," Litchfield said.
Ball State travels to Miami on Wednesday for its last road matchbefore the MAC Tournament and then concludes the regular seasonwith two home matches against Eastern Michigan and Toledo thisweekend.
Luckily for the Cards, Eastern Michigan also lost both itsmatches this weekend, so Ball State remains in the driver's seat ofthe MAC West, especially since it plays Eastern Michigan at homenext weekend.
Ohio has locked up the No. 1 seed in the MAC Tournament, and ifthe season were to end today the Cardinals would be the No. 2 seed.With two wins, Ball State can lock up at least a No. 3 seed and afirst-round bye.
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