Sports

Badgers down Panthers during spring match

For the first time in four months, the volleyball team was final able to play a match in front of their home crowd at the Field House. This time Wisconsin was able to challenge in-state foe UW-Milwaukee in a classic spring scrimmage.

The Badgers first started the match sluggish, but regrouped for a 3-1 (33-35, 30-18, 30-24, 30-25) victory. Despite the Badgers winning their final three straight games to win the match, the two teams agreed to play a fifth game, with Wisconsin claiming the contest 15-9.

"It's always important," UW head coach Pete Waite said of playing spring games. "We walk on the court and you always plan on winning and we want to work hard to win and if you're not winning you're probably not doing something very well.

"That's what Milwaukee showed in the first game," Waite added. "They came out really solid, and we were not playing well as a unit. That was our challenge to step things up and I think they did."

The first game saw neither team able to take a comfortable lead as both teams went back and forth for the entire game. However, it was the Badger errors that helped Milwaukee win the game.

"We weren't very good at all in the first game," Waite said. "For some reason we were out of sync."

Outside hitters Maria Carlini and Audra Jeffers led the team with eight and four kills respectively in the game despite both not being at 100 percent.

"[Carlini] was a little dizzy on the court and Audra Jeffers tweaked her back in warm-ups," Waite explained. "It was great that they both really fought through it."

A little rust and playing in new positions could have contributed to Wisconsin's slow start.

"It's spring, we only played four other times before this. Everybody's still trying to get used to playing different positions," Amy Bladow said. "It's a great opportunity for all of us to get in and be really versatile and get to do a lot of different stuff but it doesn't always make for the best consistency"

Another thing that contributed to the slow start was the fact that the Badgers were not playing together as a team.

"We all were trying to play individual games and not do very well as a team," Katherine Dykstra said. "After that first game we realized we have to play together to be able to win and then we picked it up the second game and won."

The second game started out much like the first with both teams trading the game's first 10 points. Then the Badgers started to go on small runs to pull away from the Panthers. Milwaukee attempted to make a come back with a 6-1 run late in the game, but it was too little too late, as Wisconsin had already built a comfortable lead.

Wisconsin carried the momentum from the second game to control their last three contests.

Jeffers led the team in kills with 21, Carlini and Bladow also pitched in 19 kills apiece. Middle blocker Taylor Reineke led the team with 2.5 blocks.

And even though the stats don't count toward her NCAA consecutive games with double digit digs, Jocelyn Wack led the team with 23.