Iowa State Sweeps UWM at Field House
December 01, 2006 | Volleyball
First round action in the NCAA women's volleyball championship kicked off Friday at the UW Field House with Iowa State (21-10) serving up three-game sweep over UW-Milwaukee (24-6). ISU, which swept the Panthers 30-21, 30-10, 30-21, moves onto the second round tomorrow at 7 p.m. and will face the winner of the Wisconsin and Notre Dame match.
Tonight's win marked the second NCAA tournament win for the Cyclones, whose last appearance was in 1993. Second-year head coach Christy Johnson, a former UW assistant coach, tabbed her first post-season win with the program.
'I did think we played real well,' Johnson said. 'We had talked about before going into this match it would be about serve and pass ' if we served and passed well, we thought we'd be successful and I thought we did those two things really well tonight. We passed probably as well as we did all year and we served really tough and kept UW-Milwaukee out of system most of the night. I think it was a great all-around effort.'
In the match ISU held UWM to a .016 hitting percentage and 32 kills. The Cyclones capitalized with a .321 percentage and 44 kills. Three ISU players finished in double figure kills with Katie Jessen leading all players at 11 kills. UWM was led by Sarah Moore and Jamie Gabrielsen with seven kills each.
Defensively ISU out-dug UWM 48-41 with Katie Churm's 16 digs leading all players.
The Cyclones also controlled the net and finished the night with 13 blocks compared to UWM's five. Jessica Klein led the Cyclones with six blocks while Kaylee Manns also added five. ISU's Erin Boeve broke her single-season block assist record with four assisted blocks and Lauren Cummings also chipped in another four blocks.
Iowa State also aced the Panthers six times from the service line. UWM struggled at the service line, recording seven serving errors.
UWM came out in control of game one as it went up four early on the Cyclones. ISU then used a five-point run to not only tie the score at 10, but also go up 12-10. UWM never managed to claw back into game one or the rest of the match as the Cyclones held the Panthers to just 10 points in game two. The Panthers did pull within four in game three (23-19) but ultimately dropped out of the tournament for the sixth time without a win.
'No matter who we play, I think we are playing pretty well so I (don't care) who we end up playing, I like the situation we're in going into it, ' Johnson said for the potential to play Wisconsin tomorrow night. 'It 's always taking care of the ball on your side of the net; it's always about serve and pass. That's always things we can control on our side of the ball. I think Notre Dame and Wisconsin ' they're very different teams. Either way we're all very excited to advance.'
