The Bowling Green volleyball team fell to Ball State Wednesday in a tough four-game match (30-27, 27-30, 18-30, 27-30) to drop their record to 12-6 overall and 5-5 in the Mid-American Conference.
“It was a very good match,” said head coach Denise Van De Walle. “I thought it was one of the better matches we played in their arena.”
The Cardinals are a tough team to beat at home as they have a 38-game winning streak when playing in their arena.
“We came out in game one and played very steadily,” Van De Walle said. “We passed the ball well and blocked well. We had a specific game plan that we wanted to run against them and we were successful.”
In fact, game one ended on a stuffed block by Laura Twyman and Caty Rommeck to give the Falcons the first game.
The Falcons had the lead in game two until the very end. The teams found themselves tied at 27, but, after two Cardinal aces, the Falcons struggled to stay in the game and lost the last point due to a call of being in the net.
“It was a little deflating to lose that game because I felt their was a lot of hard work and effort put into that,” Van De Walle said. “We were out blocking them after the second game 10-3 and that’s a big difference especially when they are a taller team than us.”
However, the Falcons went into the locker room with mixed emotions. They had hoped to be up 2-0, but were faced with a 1-1 tie.
“Game three was a different story,” Van De Walle said. “I felt like we were a completely different team when we took the floor because in a matter of moments we were down 8-1. We were constantly playing catch up.”
The Falcons never did catch up to the Cardinals and lost the third game 18-30.
“In game four the score was close again, but it was really only close in the early stages of the game,” Van De Walle said.
The Falcons were tied with the Cardinals 7-7 at one point, but were down by two to six points the rest of the game.
“Part of the problem was we didn’t block as many balls in games three and four as we did in games two and three,” Van De Walle said. “Hitting-wise, I don’t think that we were as smart with the ball as we needed to be against a good Ball State team.”
The Falcons have two home matches this weekend: Buffalo, Friday at 7 p.m., and Ohio, Saturday at 3 p.m., in Anderson Arena.
Buffalo is 4-15 overall and 0-10 in the MAC, while Ohio is 5-13 overall and 4-6 in the MAC.
“Buffalo does a really nice job,” Van De Walle said. “They are just falling short. They have taken several teams in the conference to four and five games.”
BG played Buffalo earlier in the season and beat them in five games. This will be the Falcons’ first time to play Ohio.
