No Luck for Irish at UW Field House
December 01, 2006 | Volleyball
The No. 10 Wisconsin volleyball team (25-6) kept its post-season hopes alive Friday night with a three-game sweep over Notre Dame (18-14) at the UW Field House. The Badgers downed the Irish 36-34, 30-26, 30-21 and will face Iowa State Saturday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at 7 p.m.
'We knew Notre Dame was a good team, but a very different team and that 's part of the difficulty of scouting them is that they had so many new people on the court, but they are all aggressive and they are scrappy,' UW head coach Pete Waite said.
Despite an intense first game, the Badgers held on to knock off the Irish using a balanced attack in all areas on the court.
First, the UW hit .324 on the night with 62 kills while Notre Dame hit .204 and had 51 kills. Freshman Brittney Dolgner led all players with 21 kills and hit .545 on the evening, including .909 in game one. Three other Badgers tallied double-digit kills with sophomore Audra Jeffers adding 14 kills, junior Taylor Reineke had 11 and senior Maria Carlini contributing 10 kills. For Notre Dame, Adrianna Stasiuk tallied 12 kills on the night.
Second, the Badgers out-dug Notre Dame 58-50. Junior Jocelyn Wack had a Badger-high 12 digs while junior Jackie Simpson and Dolgner each added 11 digs. The Irish's Danielle Herdnon led all players with 17 digs.
Third, the UW controlled the block with 11 stuffs compared to the Irish's five. As the leading blocker in the Big Ten Conference, Reineke continued to excel on the block with seven on the night including two solos. Simpson also blocked five times while senior Amy Bladow and Jeffers chipped in three a piece. Notre Dame's Mallorie Croal and Justine Stremick had three block assists each.
Finally in assists, Simpson had 51 of the Badgers' 59 assists. Notre Dame finished with 50 on the night with Jamel Nicholas and Ashley Tarutis contributing 25 and 20, respectively.
The one thing the Irish fared better than the Badgers in was at the service line. Notre Dame had seven aces while the UW had just three. Each team finished with five serving errors.
'Their defense was great, especially in the first half when they were out-digging us by five or six,' Waite said. 'That was one goal we had after that game was to pick up our defense. I'm glad to see that we ended up out-digging them and I think our block kept getting stronger as the match went on and I think that made a difference also. So, it was a great hitting percentage for us. We probably weren't hitting on all cylinders, but still a good one.'
In game one the score was tied 19 times, including six ties from the 29-point mark on, as neither team was willing to back down. The Badgers had match-point at 29-28 but a kill by Notre Dame's Serinity Phillips knotted the score at 29. The UW kept trying to close out game one as they would go up by a point but the Irish kept responding by tying the score. Finally after a 34-all score, two Notre Dame errors gave the Badgers game one at 36-34. Dolgner put down 10 of her match-high 21 kills in the first game.
'I think that Notre Dame is a team that always fights and scraps for everything, and we had to be right in there fighting and scrapping just like them, ' Simpson said of game one. 'They made some great passes so they could side out really well, so it just turned into a side out battle and who could get that second point.'
Still surging from game one, the teams knotted the score 12 times in game two. Notre Dame used a four-point streak mid-game to go up 16-14 and had another slight lead at 17-15. Wisconsin then tied the score three times before going on a three-point streak to go up 23-20. The Badgers led by as many as six down the stretch but the Irish held off game point three times before Wisconsin capped off game two, 30-26. Dolgner led the UW in game two with eight kills and also added a service ace.
After two close games, the Badgers finally wore out the Irish with a few runs and five blocks in game three. Wisconsin used a five-point rally behind the service of Simpson to go up 14-7 early in the game. Notre Dame managed to pull within two at 16-14 but the UW rattled off another four-point stretch to extend the lead at 22-15. In the final stretch Jeffers tallied five kills, including three consecutive kills to help the Badgers knock off Notre Dame, 30-21. Reineke had a game high six kills, hitting .667 to lead Wisconsin.
Wisconsin welcomes Iowa State, a 3-0 winner over UW-Milwaukee earlier tonight, and former UW assistant coach Christy Johnson back to the Field House floor tomorrow. This will be just the fourth match-up in series history with the Badgers holding a 2-1 advantage.
