Aug. 27, 2016
HONOLULU – It wasn't as pretty as Friday night's win over No. 6 Hawai'i, but the fourth-ranked Wisconsin volleyball team improved to 2-0 on the season with a 3-0 win over Arizona on Saturday night.  The Badgers swept the Wildcats 26-24, 26-24, 25-22 in the second round of the Rainbow Wahine Invitational.

The match was also completely different than what UW expected.

Arizona opened the tournament on Friday night with a 3-1 loss to Kansas State. That was the Badgers only chance to scout the Wildcats and the Wisconsin staff prepared a scouting report based on what it saw on Friday. But the Arizona team that showed up today played a completely different style.

"They were so different than what they were 24 hours ago," head coach Kelly Sheffield explained. "When you have such a short turnover that we did, we got done late last night and we didn't talk about (Arizona), we didn't watch any film. We met with (the players) twice today. You're giving them very, very little information. You try to figure out what's the essence of a team."

The Badgers assumed they would need to stop Kalei Mau, who led the Wildcats with 19 kills on 60 attack attempts against K-State on Friday. Against Wisconsin, Mau didn't start and didn't play until late in the first set. Arizona also changed the way its players attacked in the middle and how they received serve.

Wisconsin had to come from behind in all three sets, trailing by four points in the first set, by three points in the second set and by four points in the third set.

"You're not going to play great all the time," Sheffield added. "I know everybody wants to play great all the time. The players want to be great. They were ready to play. This thing that close games mean you're not ready to play … our team was locked in. Coaches know when your players are locked in and when they are not. Our players were ready to play and they were locked in throughout the match.

"Arizona was doing some things we had difficulty with."

The Wildcats outhit the Badgers .176 (38 kills – 17 errors – 119 attempts) to .156 (44-24-128) and outblocked them 13-10. Wisconsin won the back-row game, 56 – 51 in digs and the service game, 4 – 0 in aces.

Arizona's Kendra Dahlke led all players with 17 kills while junior Lauryn Gillis led Wisconsin with 12 putaways. Three other Badgers added eight-or-more kills with Molly Haggerty (9), Haleigh Nelson (8) and Romana Kriskova (8) providing a balanced attack.

Haggerty struggled tonight, hitting a negative .061 (9–11 -33), but added seven digs and one block.

"That was a learning match for Molly," said Sheffield. "But the thing I liked about her is as much as she struggled, she probably got blocked more tonight than she did her entire senior year in high school, but it didn't affect her passing (and) her serving was great today. Everybody has that 'welcome to college volleyball moment' and most people collapse. I learned a lot more about Molly today – that she's going to be rock solid in these other skills when her attacking is off so I really liked that."

Junior Kelli Bates record her second-straight 20-plus dig match, leading all players with 20 saves. Senior Lauren Carlini picked up her first double-double of the season with 34 assists and 13 digs.

Sophomore Tionna Williams led the Badgers with five blocks while Carlini, Gillis and Nelson all added three blocks apiece.

"You learn a lot about your team in that scenario," Sheffield said. "I thought we kept our composure, we kept chipping away, we kept working, (and) we kept coming together. When the struggle happens, do you embrace that struggle? Sometimes that struggle can just be a set but for us, it was that entire match. We stayed together and we kept fighting."

In the first set, the Badgers battled to a 24-24 tie before the Wildcats were called for being out of rotation. The mistake gave UW set point before an Arizona attack error gave Wisconsin the set.
The second set was also tied a 24 before a kill by Kriskova and a block by Kriskova and Williams gave the Badgers a 2-0 lead. The Wildcats held off two match points with kills in the third set before Haggerty connected on a kill to give Wisconsin the sweep.

UW wraps up tournament play on Sunday with a 5 p.m. CT match against Kansas State.