It didn't take long for Rachel Refenes to turn her career kill mark to 1,000.Refenes, a senior middle attacker, entered Wednesday's match with 999 kills for her collegiate career, and, with the score tied 2-2 delivered a kill from the edge of the net to reach the millennium mark.She didn't stop there, putting together a team-leading 14 kills as Ball State University beat in-state rival Butler 3-0."Angie (Parrell) was setting the ball really well tonight and for some reason Butler wasn't blocking my favorite shot," she said. "Today went really well."Coach Randy Litchfield also hit a milestone as he made career start 500, all at Ball State. He entered the 2005 season 30th in the NCAA ranks in winning percentage and 53rd in wins.The Cardinals started each game slow, letting Butler come back from a five point lead in game one and falling down 10-5 and 7-3 in the second before rallying to win each set by a wide margin."We're mediocre at the start, gain control of ourself in the middle of the game and then the last ten points we seem to be real solid," Litchfield said. "And that's OK. That's far better than the reverse."Ball State (6-3) won in an hour an 19 minutes, a relatively quick win over a Butler (3-5) team that struggled to hit well. They had 14 less kills, seven more attack errors and failed to hit above .200 percent in games one and three."We needed to win and we needed to win in three," senior outside attacker Sarah Obras said. "I think we could have dominated a little more. We just started off real slow in every single game, but we picked it up really well. If we can just play the whole game like we did at the end of the game, we'd be really, really good."Obras backed up Refenes with 10 kills and added a team-high 12 digs.Litchfield is not concerned with his teams inability to start strong-a trend he said he noticed throughout the season - at this point."Well it doesn't concern you against a mid-caliber team," he said. "But we've got Miami coming in here in a week and a half, and they're playing their best volleyball in five or six years. And it would concern me then."It's weird things that get us off to a bad start; net errors, reception errors, things we have control of. So, with that in mind, those are things we can fix."The Cardinals have the weekend off before returning to play IPFW on Tuesday in Fort Wayne and starting the Mid-American Conference season on Aug. 23 against Miami in Worthen Arena."We played pretty well, and right now, that's good enough," Litchfield said. "A week and a half from now, we'll have to be a notch better."
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