No Vacation for Illini in Wisconsin
November 02, 2001 | Volleyball
The seventh-ranked Wisconsin volleyball team dispatched 25th-ranked Illinois 30-20, 30-22, 30-24 Friday night at the UW Field House in front of 4,077 fans. The Badgers (18-3, 12-1 Big Ten) dominated the Fighting Illini (15-6, 8-5) offensively, recording 53 kills while limiting the visitors to 32, keeping a firm hold on the top stop in the conference standings.
'I'm pretty pleased with our performance tonight considering we came off a loss to Penn State, a loss of a starter and two weeks on the road,' Wisconsin Head Coach Pete Waite said. 'So it's great to be home and I think the team played very, very well.'
Sherisa Livingston paced the Badger attack with 16 kills and a .500 hitting percentage. Erin Byrd and Jill Odenthal chipped in with 13 and 11, respectively. The Wisconsin defense was strong as well with four Badgers tallying double-digit digs led by Byrd with 11. Korie Gardner, Lori Rittenhouse and Sara Urbanek each had 10.
Despite being outblocked for the match 5-4, Wisconsin was able to control the tempo thanks to another solid performance from Odenthal, playing for injured Lisa Zukowski, and from Amy Hultgren, who added nine kills while hitting .471 percent.
The Badgers came out aggressive in Game 1, grabbing a 4-1 lead. Illinois fought back to take a 6-5 lead, but Livingston keyed a 12-5 run with three kills to put the Badgers ahead 18-10. Livingston finished the game with six kills and teamed with setter Lizzy Fitzgerald for a block to finish off the Illini in Game 1.
Things started to heat up in Game 2 as the Badger offense struggled early with five hitting errors to put Illinois up 11-7. Wisconsin cut the lead to 11-10 to force an Illinois time out and after a prolonged argument with the officials over the ensuing point, Illinois Head Coach Don Hardin was issued a red card to give the Badgers a free point to tie the match at 11. Wisconsin kept the momentum going with an 11-5 run to break the game open and finished with a 26-10 dig advantage to go up two game to one in the match.
Illinois recovered from a seven-point deficit in Game 3 to cut the Badger lead to two at 19-17 led by four kills from Lisa Argabright. But Wisconsin 's balanced attack proved too much for Illinois as Fitzgerald found five different Badgers for kills down the stretch to get Wisconsin back on the winning track.
'We just took our game to them and they had to play to our pace of the game and I think they struggled with that,' Waite said. 'We shut them down, did a good job with our scouting report and we were just very disciplined and aggressive tonight.'
Wisconsin faces Indiana Saturday at 7 p.m. at the UW Field House.
