Volleyball wins last match of the weekend; loses first two
It was a slow start for the Central Michigan volleyball team, but they salvaged the final match of the weekend.
The Chippewas (0-2), after falling to Iowa and Marquette, were able to beat the tournament champion Saint Louis (2-1) in a three-game sweep.
Although CMU started off slow by letting the Billikens jump out to a six-point lead, it looked like it was going to be a mirror image of the Marquette game earlier on the day, but the Chippewas didn’t let déjà vu set in and they fought back.
They finally got ahead of Saint Louis with a 16-15 score and after battling back and forth a bit, pulled away to a 25-21 win in game one. The two teams battled back and forth again in game two, but much like game one, CMU pulled away for another 25-21 win.
Game three was a much different story. The game wasn’t even close. The Chippewas took a 12-11 lead and never looked back as their lead increased and they finished the sweep with a 25-12 win.
“We had some huge points where momentum just continued to add up and I wanted to make sure we didn’t get unaggressive and let them (Saint Louis) have their way with us,” said head coach Erik Olson.
The win was one of the biggest non-conference wins as CMU beat the No. 58 RPI-ranked Billikens.
“That was one of our bigger non-conference RPI wins since I’ve been here, so that is a big deal,” Olson said. “It was a big win and it demonstrated that they (Central Michigan) know how to win and show patience throughout the match.”
It wasn’t all great, though, as the Chippewas started off the tournament losing their first two games against Iowa and Marquette.
The first match against Iowa and CMU started slow with the Chippewas finding themselves in a deep hole after losing the first two games 26-24 and 25-19.
But they battled and pulled the match even after winning games three and four 25-22 and 25-23. The Chippewas forced a game five, playing up to fifteen, but couldn’t come away with the victory, losing 15-13 to the host Hawkeyes.
“We shuffled our lineup a little bit and talked about how we need to pass better and create a different flow,” Olson said.
“We missed two serves in game five that weren’t good misses and let them have a three point lead and we couldn’t get back.”
The end of that fifth game seemed to carry over into the Marquette match as they swept CMU with a 25-17 win in game one, 25-19 in game two and 25-11 in game three.
But the lasting memory of the tournament will be the win over Saint Louis and that win marking Olson’s career win No. 100.
“It means I’ve been coaching for awhile,” Olson said. “I’ve coached a lot of great players and we’re building a program at Central Michigan.”
The tournament also marked sophomore middle blocker Danielle Gotham’s first All-Tournament award. She received the Hawkeye Challenge All-Tournament Team honor for her solid play all weekend along especially in the first match against Iowa where she recorded nine blocks.
“We learned a lot as a team and we can get better from here,” Gotham said. “We came out positive and we can only move forward.”
