The reigning Mid-Atlantic Conference champions will start the season with a tournament at the Stroh Center, but will be playing higher ranked teams.
The Bowling Green Hampton Inn Invitational will begin the volleyball season for the BG Falcons against Marquette, No. 25 Creighton and No. 13 BYU.
The Falcons first game against Marquette will begin at 7 p.m. The team will play No. 25 Creighton and No. 13 BYU Saturday at 10 a.m. and 7p.m.
BG welcomes back nine letterwinners from last season as well as five of six starters and the libero who helped lead the team to a season record of 22-11. Seniors Lindsey Butterfield, Laura Avila and Libby Dachenhaus were announced as team captains Thursday afternoon. Although they are not in the top 25, Head Coach Danijela Tomic said they are right on the cusp of being nationally ranked.
“We have the worst ranked team in our own tournament, based on the record for last year,” said Tomic. Bowling Green is ranked 46th in the nation, according to NCAA.com.
Tomic said playing a list of high caliber teams is not the most challenging factor of opening a season, but because the teams are out of conference and have little public film, it is hard to know what exactly to expect.
“Whenever we play at the begging of the year against non-conference, especially first weekend, we can’t scout much,” said Tomic. “We will watch a video [from last year] because you can see tendencies and some players are returning, but it’s more what we do on our side of the net. Let’s control and see where we are, and after that game we will see.”
Tomic said the team has focused on playing hard with discipline, intelligence, aggressiveness and showing full effort.
“If we do these things everyday in practice,” Tomic said. “If that’s enough to beat Marquette— great— if it isn’t we’ll come back the following week and get better in the areas we need to.”
The Falcons lost to Marquette last year in three sets, but have a slim lead all time record of 3-2 against the Golden Eagles.
The Golden Eagles are coming off a season in which they set program records for overall (27-7) and Big East Conference victories (13-2), and made their second-straight trip to the NCAA Championship.
