Creighton University
Bradley
Volleyball Closes Regular-Season With Sweep at Bradley
11/21/2009 9:00:00 PM | Volleyball
PEORIA, Ill. -- The Creighton Volleyball team closed the regular-season with a convincing 3-0 sweep of Bradley on Saturday evening in Peoria, Ill. Scores of the match in favor of the Jays were 25-15, 25-13, 25-18.
Creighton is now 13-16 and finishes league play 10-8, tied for fourth in the Missouri Valley Conference with Drake. Bradley closed its season 9-23 and was 0-18 in conference action.
"I was pleased with how we played tonight, especially going into a huge match on Thursday against Drake, so that's good as far as momentum," said CU head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth. "The big thing for tonight was that we didn't make mistakes even though we beat them handily. Early in the year this team gave teams a lot of point through unforced errors and we're starting to clean those up and that was apparent tonight."
The Jays never trailed while getting out to quick starts in both sets. The Bluejays led 7-2 and 13-5 to open the match, and had leads of 5-0, 11-1 and 17-3 in the second set.
The third set was a little closer with seven ties and three lead changes, before CU pulled away from a 13-13 tie with five straight points on Megan Bober's serve.
Alie Oelke and Jessica Houts each led CU with nine kills, while Alicia Runge continued her strong play of late with eight kills. Oelke led the CU defense with 16 kills while Sarah Schulze (11) and Nayka Benitez (10) also had double-digit digs. Heather Thorson came off the bench to record four blocks and lead CU's front line. Creighton had 43 kills and just six errors in 106 swings, hitting .349. The Jays also had four aces, 58 digs and nine blocks.
Bradley was led by 11 kills from Amy Reichel, who hit .308. Rachelle Dejean topped BU with 15 digs. The Braves had 28 kills, two aces, 48 digs and no blocks while hitting .106.
Fourth-seeded Creighton returns to action on Thursday at 8 pm when it hosts fifth-seeded Drake in the second quarterfinal of the 2009 State Farm MVC Tournament in Omaha, Neb. The first quarterfinal will begin at 6 pm and feature third-seeded Wichita State against sixth-seeded Southern Illinois.NOTES: Creighton's six attack errors were a season-low, tied for third-fewest in school history and Creighton's fewest since four attack errors vs. Tulsa on 10/27/95.
