Saturday evening, Bowling Green volleyball (1-1) defended its home court against the Illinois Fighting Illini. The Falcons closed the game with their first-season loss and ended up at 1-1.
Illinois swept Bowling Green 3-0 with sets of 25-19, 25-18, and 25-21. Despite the Falcons keeping it close, Illinois had enough momentum to keep the distance of scores, eventually sweeping the Falcons.
Bowling Green’s best offensive players of the night came from senior outside hitter Mia Tyler with 11 kills and junior opposite hitter Lauryn Hovey with nine kills, who narrowly missed out on a double-double, finishing the game with one kill short and 10 digs.
Fifth-year middle blocker Alexis Mettille also had a team-leading three blocks during the game. Senior setter Amanda Otten led the team with 24 assists on the night as well.
Head coach Danijela Tomic spoke postgame about the team’s performance.“Sport is kind of funny, you can play poorly and win and play well and lose, I feel like we played better today than yesterday, and we lost,” said Tomic. “We outdug them and were close when it came to kills, offensively considering how much we were out of system was impressive. There was moments of brilliance with the effort shown.”
Here’s how the game played out:
First Set:
Illinois started with a 3-1 to start the set. The Fighting Illini maintained their momentum with a 9-4 lead heading into the game’s first timeout.
Coming out of the timeout it was a back-and-forth sequence to start. Illinois started to gain traction and build a bigger lead, but the Falcons once again cut the lead to 16-13, highlighted by a few strong back-to-back kills by Tyler to head into the second timeout of the game.
The Fighting Illini ended up taking the first set with a score of 25-19. Illinois blocking up front proved to be a challenge for the Falcons as Illinois scored eight blocking assists to the Falcons zero.
Second Set:
Heading into the second set, the tempo was set quickly with back-and-forth points scored by the Falcons and Fighting Illini.
The first timeout of the second set happened at a score of 10-5 for a Fighting Illini lead. The highlight of the first part of this set was a very entertaining back-and-forth point which saw players diving and making incredible saves at both ends of the court.
Tyler showed her impressive power once again by getting multiple kills that the Fighting Illini simply couldn’t handle. Illinois showed their smarts on the court with most of their points this set coming from attack errors.
Unfortunately, the momentum was not there for the Falcons, as Illinois went on a 5-1 run to end the second set with a final score of 25-18.
Third Set:
The third set starts with once again another impressive kill from Tyler that faded to the corner of the court. The Falcons started well with a 2-0 lead to start the third set, but the Fighting Illini once again gained momentum with their blocking to gain a 9-6 lead over the Falcons. The game headed into its first timeout of the third set with a Fighting Illini lead of 12-10.
A highlight from the Falcons was from Libero, Lindsey LaPinta making an impressive diving save to keep the ball alive which led to an eventual Bowling Green point. Another impressive highlight was Mettille getting back-to-back blocks to give Bowling Green the points to gain a 16-14 lead.
The blocking from Illinois proved to be too much for the Falcons at the end of the third and final set with a score of 25-21 for a sweep for the Fighting Illini over the Falcons.
Bowling Green will play their final game of the Best Western Invitational tomorrow night, facing the Cincinnati Bearcats on Sunday, September 1st at 1 p.m. to end this weekend’s set of games.
Catch all of the action on 88.1 FM WBGU as Falcon Media Sports Network’s Chas McNeil and Jonathan Angell have the call from the Stroh.
