Creighton University
Illinois St.
Volleyball Downs Redbirds In Four
10/27/2007 9:30:00 PM | Volleyball
NORMAL, Ill. -- The Creighton volleyball team won its sixth straight road match, picking up a 3-1 win at Illinois State on Saturday night at Redbird Arena. Creighton won by scores of 30-28, 22-30, 30-20, 30-23 and is now a perfect 7-0 in MVC road matches this fall.
The Bluejays are also now 16-8 overall and 10-3 in the MVC. With the win, Creighton also guaranteed itself a spot in next month's State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, for which the top six teams in the MVC qualify. The Redbirds dropped to 15-9 on the season and are 7-6 in league action.
"I really felt like the match would come down to serving and passing, and I thought in the game we lost serving was the issue," said CU head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth. "A lot of people stepped up from offensively for us on the night. Kelly Goc played great and Carolyn Decker had one our best outside performances of the season. Allie Oelke played great too.
"I was pleased that we implemented things we've been working on in practice and got things done like our blocking, which is something we did well all weekend," continued Booth.
Kelly Goc led Creighton with 20 kills while hitting .386, her fifth straight match against Illinois State with 20 kills or more and at least .350 hitting. Freshman Allie Oelke had 16 kills, 16 digs, four blocks and hit .349. Creighton hit .245 and outdug the MVC leader in digs by a 95-88 margin.
Illinois State was paced by 20 kills from Kari Staehlin, who had 20 kills and hit a blistering .475 in 40 swings.
Game one featured 12 ties and six lead changes before Creighton emerged with a 30-28 win. With the score tied at 23, Oelke and Goc hammerd consecutive kills to take a 25-23 lead. The teams then traded 10 straight sideouts, allowing Creighton to win 30-28 on a Lauren Bloemke kill.
ISU hit .356 with 18 kills in the second game to take a 30-22 victory and even the match at 1-1 heading to intermission. After falling behind by as much as 21-12, Creighton closed to within 22-17 before ISU pulled away.
The always pivotal third game saw Creighton close with a 12-2 run after the score was tied at 18. Four straight points on Sarah Schulze's serve, including consecutive aces, helped the Jays take a 22-18 lead. After four straight sideouts, Oelke served up the final seven points of Creighton's 30-20 win. Creighton had 20 kills in the third game alone, including seven from Oelke and five from Carolyn Decker, while also digging 29 balls.
The fourth game saw Bloemke take over, as the sophomore from Tampa, Fla., had five kills and four blocks as Creighton sealed the win with a 30-23 triumph. Once again the serving of Schluze came up big as the sophomore put together a 5-0 serving splurge to give CU a 9-5 lead, including her third ace of the match. Creighton hit .364 in the fourth game and took advantage of 18 combined hitting, blocking, serving and ball handling errors by Illinois State.
NOTES: Korie Lebeda had 54 assists and now sits just three helpers shy of 1,000 for the third straight year ...Bianca Rivera has now had 20 or more digs in 11 matches this season ...Creighton's only two remaining regular-season road matches are against MVC co-leaders Missouri State (Nov. 9) and Wichita State (Nov. 10) ...After winning just three of the first 26 meetings all-time against Illinois State, Creighton has now won five straight against the Redbirds. All five wins have been in four games ...Creighton has never swept Illinois State.
