The volleyball team’s winning streak halted Friday as the Falcons fell in three sets to Northern Illinois.
“Northern Illinois played great volleyball and Bowling Green didn’t,” said head coach Denise Van De Walle. “They passed the ball well, their outside did a tremendous job attacking hard and through the seam of our block and off our block.”
As a result the Falcons were held to only 29 blocks, while the Huskies had an overwhelming 58 blocks.
“We really struggled blocking and when we struggle blocking that seems to really blow our confidence,” Van De Walle said. “Our middles got fooled a lot. They chased the wrong person in Northern’s offense so it created several holes in the block.”
The Huskies took full advantage of these holes placing the ball in places that the Falcons were unable to get to.
“Their setter did a great job at seeing that our middles went with their middles and then she shoved the ball outside,” Van De Walle said. “Their outside did exactly what you would want left-side hitters to do. They jumped and swung hard.”
Van De Walle said, “We were trying, but nothing we did worked. The first game was really good up until about 20 or 25 points. Then you could see that we were playing catch up at that point. We had a lead early on, but then once they caught up and passed us we were playing catch up.”
Once the Falcons fell behind they went on to lose the first set 25-30.
“In game two, Northern Illinois played even better than they did in game one,” Van De Walle said. “They had a quick start against us and we couldn’t recover. So we really did get beat. It wasn’t that we beat ourselves because we were never really in that match.”
BG didn’t do as well in the second and third set. They only scored a total of 35 points between the two matches – 19 in the second and 16 in the third.
“There was more frustration at how big the gap was in the score,” Van De Walle said. “We got beat soundly in the third game.”
Senior Caty Rommeck led the team with 15 kills. This was the seventh match this season Rommeck has averaged five kills per game. Along with her 15 kills, Rommeck had nine digs, a solo block and a service ace.
“I think she didn’t even commit an error until the third game,” Van De Walle said. “We were so one dimensional that night. We didn’t have really good passing. We couldn’t really get her the ball as often as we needed to.”
Rommeck’s nine digs were matched by senior Amber Vorst, who also had two kills.
Senior Natalie Becker had a team-high 28 assists and one service ace, while junior Kristin Gamby had seven kills and three digs, and sophomore Laura Twyman had four kills and four digs.
“I think we’re back to reality now,” Van De Walle said. “We’re 7-2, but we were given a clinic on how to hit the ball by Northern Illinois. They had twice as many kills as we did.”
The Falcons were held to a team total 29 kills and hit .085, while the Huskies had 58 kills and hit .318 as a team.
