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Volleyball chops Sycamores

The Bradley volleyball team celebrated its second conference win Saturday after taking down Indiana State in four sets. The Braves now sit at 2-9 in conference play. Photo by Justin Limoges.
The Bradley volleyball team celebrated its second conference win Saturday after taking down Indiana State in four sets. The Braves now sit at 2-9 in conference play. Photo by Justin Limoges.

The Bradley volleyball team split its weekend home series with a loss against Illinois State and a win against Indiana State. The team picked up its seventh victory of the season, the most wins it’s had since the 2013 season.

The Braves had a rough start to the weekend, when they fell behind Illinois State 10-0 to start the first set and eventually lost 25-13. But even though the team started slow, head coach Carol Price-Torok said the end of the first set helped carry some momentum into the remaining sets to make the match competitive.

“The second set we got to start fresh and get going again,” Price-Torok said. “We bounced back at the end of the [first] set and tried to make a little bit of an emotional run, so going into the second set, we could start even and get after it.”

From the first set on, Bradley battled with the Redbirds and wouldn’t go quietly as the second set featured a close score of 21-20 and the third set saw a 19-18 score. Ultimately, the Braves efforts came up just short, losing in straight sets.

Against Indiana State, the Braves dominated for much of the match to pick up their second Missouri Valley Conference win of the season. The Sycamores were able to take the third set, but it took a nearly perfect set (zero attack errors) to get to that point.

Price-Torok said she thought the serving plan was the key to pulling out the victory, which helped slow down the attackers on the other side of the net.

“We were trying to serve short to take out some of their attackers,” Price-Torok said. “Their right side has been really hot, as well as their middles, so we were trying to slow them down a little bit so we could get a defensive read or take one of them out entirely … The girls executed on the serving plan really well, and we were able to effectively slow them down so we could do some better things defending.”

One of the key pieces in the win over Indiana State was redshirt junior Rachel Jones, who tallied up 12 kills and had a hitting percentage of .500. Jones credited her spectacular match to the way her teammates were able to set her up in good positions.

“Just the ball control being there [helped],” Jones said. “My position relies so much on the pass and the setter finding me. Erin [Olson] did a great job of making sure I was open and able to hit the shots I was able to hit, which is why I think I did so well.”

The Braves hit the road this weekend as they face off at Evansville at 7 p.m. tonight and Southern Illinois at 7 p.m.  Saturday night.

“We have to continue to respect everyone in our conference,” Price-Torok said. “Then people have to show up to play. We have to start strong and not have to fight back from a three, four, five point deficit to really get back into the games. We really have to get on the execution game from the get go instead of waiting towards the end of matches to get on those momentum swings.”

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