The Falcons loss to the Western Michigan University Broncos severely hurt the volleyball team’s chance of winning the regular season Mid-American Conference Championships.
With BG’s four-set loss Saturday, Ball State University and Ohio University stepped out of reach for BG to catch up, coach Danijela Tomic said.
The Falcons are now 8-4 in the in the Mid-American Conference and 12-12 on the season.
Tomic said the story of their season is inconsistent playing, and that type of play appeared again in the second set of Saturday’s match.
In the second set, the Falcon offense attacked well, Tomic said.
BG hit .429 and recorded 18 team kills, winning. The BG defense kept the WMU hitters to .235 as a team. BG won this set 25-19. They lost their next two sets as the Falcons hit .000 in set 3 and .021 in 4.
“[WMU] is a good defensive team,” Tomic said. “Before the game I told my team to be patient and be ready to rally.”
The Falcons out dug WMU 63-60, but Tomic said her team lost the game because of hitting errors and serving errors.
“Paige [Penrod] had 10 errors and hit .177,” she said. “Yes she had 21 kills, and you can spin it around to a good thing, but right now she is playing below her potential.”
Libero Ashley Dunn said the team’s inconsistency is because the team has different players playing well at different times.
“Everyone needs to do their job all the time, and that is what we focus on,” Dunn said. “We need to find a consistent level of everybody playing well.”
Tomic said the team felt the loss was disappointing, but they do not feel bad.
“Life goes on,” She said. “We had a good practice today, and I expect to have a good one tomorrow. We have enough talent and ability to be a good team.”
Setter Erica Fullenkamp looked for positives despite the loss.
“We have two more weekends of MAC play left and the MAC tournament. We have to keep working hard and practice everyday to fix our inconsistencies.”
At this point the Falcons feel they’re fighting for a good seed spot in The MAC Championship Tournament. The higher seed they get, better chance they have of winning the tournament, Tomic said.
“We have run so many different lineups this season, we are pretty confident in our depth as a team this year,” said middle Kaitlyn Skinner.
The Falcons will take on two teams this weekend at The Stroh. Friday, the volleyball team will take on the Kent State University Golden Flashes and Saturday they will play the Ohio University Bobcats. Saturday will be senior night to celebrate the contributions of eight players playing in their last season of eligibility.
