With senior night at hand and the end of the road fast approaching for three of the team’s senior stars, the Badger volleyball team was swept by Penn State (27-30, 24-30, 27-30) Friday night, leaving the bitter taste of defeat in the mouths of those players who might have seen their last action in the Fieldhouse.
“I sure didn’t expect that we would go down in three,” Badger head coach Pete Waite said after the match. “We weren’t able to get our passing on-track early; we were just making some mental errors. If you do that against a good team that is playing really well, then you are going to take one on the chin.”
The Badgers jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in game one with a flurry of serves by Morgan Shields that kept the Nittany Lion returners off-balance and prevented star outside hitter Cara Smith from spiking the ball. The Badgers gave those four points back to Penn State after hitting two balls out of bounds and committing two illegal touches.
Momentum still hung in the balance midway through the game, as Shields continued her hot serving with an ace, giving the Badgers a 14-11 lead and arousing the huge crowd of 6,761 people.
After that, Penn State began to take control of the match, and the balanced offensive attack by the Badgers was overcome by the individual play of Levy Mishka and Cara Smith. Jill Odenthal and Amy Hultgren each had three kills in the game, while Aubrey Meierotto and Lori Rittenhouse added four apiece.
The Badgers were led by Erin Byrd’s five kills, and the team went on a run late in the match, closing the once-four-point Lion lead to one at 27-28, before losing the game 27-30.
Game two was once again dominated by the Penn State offensive duo of Smith and Levy, who combined for 16 kills. Early in the game, the Badgers took a 1-0 lead, not knowing that it would be their last lead of the evening.
Trying to claw their way back into the match in game two, the Badgers were led by a dynamic duo of their own. Senior Erin Byrd connected on seven of nine kills in the game, while sophomore Jill Odenthal added six kills to the Badger attack, in the team’s 24-30 loss.
“It felt to me like we could never catch up to their pace,” Byrd said. “They were just playing faster than us the whole time.”
Byrd remained the one constant in the Badger attack all night, as she added nine kills in game three to give her 21 for the match. She also totaled nine digs and a service ace to what might have been her last game at UW.
“Erin was just unstoppable out there tonight,” Waite said.
Game three was much like game one, as the Badgers got down in the middle of the game, then stayed with Penn State to lose 27-30. Sloppy play and miscommunications throughout the match plagued the Badgers, as they were swept at home for the first time since playing PSU in 1998.
“We just didn’t have an answer for them tonight,” Waite said. “If they get it by your blockers, then you have to dig the ball, and we didn’t do either tonight until a little too late.”
The Badgers were out-blocked by Penn State 13 to five; however, the team out-dug its opponent by 15 and also had five more kills than Penn State. Some major mistakes at key points in the match hurt the Badgers, and their inability to take advantage of the few Penn State mistakes spelled disaster for any comeback bid. The Nittany Lions were able to kill any Badger momentum with huge digs while the games were still up in the air.
“I think they were making some big digs. I mean, we out-dug them, but they made some big ones at crucial times,” Waite said. “[Outside hitter] Aubrey [Mierotto] was crushing some balls, and they were putting it right on target. That doesn’t happen very often, so they did a good job with that, and I give them a lot of credit.
The Badgers had a change in their starting lineup from Wednesday’s thrilling victory over Northwestern, adding freshman Aubrey Meierotto to the outside hitter position. Meierotto’s play was anything but spectacular at moments throughout her first start of the season, as she finished the match with seven kills and six hitting errors. Freshmen Lauren Ford and Sheila Shaw also saw some playing time, combining for four kills in the Badger loss.
“At times, we went with a very young lineup out there, and sometimes that just happens, and sometimes the young kids are keeping up to the pace,” Waite said. “I am not going to put any blame on them; [the Nittany Lions] just had experience on their side.”
The crowd of 6,761 was the third-largest ever for a Badger game in the Fieldhouse, and after Wednesday’s loud crowd cheered the team onto victory it is expected that a huge contingent will come out for any NCAA tournament games that the team will play at home. Although the Badgers lost and are now 21-8 overall and 12-6 in the Big Ten, they still have the NCAA tournament to set their sights on.
“We just didn’t have everything going we had in past nights,” senior captain Erin Byrd said.
