The IU volleyball team delves deeper into its grueling four-game stretch and will welcome two high-profile opponents to Bloomington this weekend.
Fresh off a road trip to match up against No. 10 Purdue, IU (12-3, 1-1) is back home and will face No. 2 Minnesota (10-1, 1-0) on Friday night and No. 3 Wisconsin (10-1, 2-0) on Saturday night at University Gym.
“We talked about how high you can bounce and come back from a loss,” IU Coach Sherry Dunbar-Kruzan said. “That’s the most important thing. We are playing two very tough opponents, but we need to play our game. The bounce back is more about us than winning. You can’t predict the outcome — you can only predict what kind of work you are going to put out on the court.”
IU will once again look to shake the trend of starting sets slow, as falling behind early plagued the Hoosiers once again last weekend.
Dunbar-Kruzan is now asking her players to treat the beginning of practices as if they are matches in an effort to remedy the situation.
The 10th-year coach and her staff praised their players for buying into this solution and making Wednesday’s practice a very successful one.
After dropping the match at Purdue’s Mackey Arena in front of about 9,000 Boilermaker fans, Dunbar-Kruzan reiterated the importance of home court advantage and admired the loud environment. She said she hopes IU fans will show up in full force to cheer on their team.
“For people at Indiana University and for people that live in Bloomington, to have a chance to come and see the No. 2 and No. 3 teams in the country and to cheer us on is huge,” Dunbar-Kruzan said. “You are not going to see better sports than right here in U-Gym. We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to put our team out on the floor against Minnesota and Wisconsin and to see what we can do.”
The Hoosier coach called upon her leadership council to figure out why the team has been playing stressed and tight in order to prepare for the weekend’s tough tests.
According to Dunbar-Kruzan, the team’s five seniors placed the blame upon themselves and said they know they are expected to perform all the time and be good role models to the younger players on the court.
In order to continue to improve, Dunbar-Kruzan said she believes that her team must put it all on the floor to learn from each match and create good habits. She said the Hoosiers didn’t play to a level that allowed them to learn from last weekend’s loss and pointed out that you can’t get pummeled and think you learned anything.
Although they make an effort to approach every opponent the same, IU’s coaching staff changed its game plan to better combat its quality challengers this weekend. IU will be adjusting its blocking scheme and plans on serving aggressively in its two matches.
“You have to give it your all in every Big Ten game,” junior outside hitter Jessica Leish said. “Playing like we did last weekend gives us an edge to change it around, but we just have to be the best we can be every night. The teams we are playing this weekend are great teams but we’re also a great team. We have a fight in us and a passion for the game that will make this weekend really good.”
