Home sweet home: Hoosiers win IU Credit Union tourney title

They've got momentum.\nAfter a dominating performance at their own IU Credit Union tournament this weekend, which featured several career-record performances, the IU women's volleyball team is riding high heading into Big Ten play.\n"We are going to celebrate the win, but we will be right back in the gym to start practicing for the Big Ten," IU coach Katie Weismille said. "It's nice to come off with a tournament trophy and a win, but we know we have to prepare for this Big Ten season."\nThe Hoosiers kicked off the weekend Friday against University of Tennessee at Chattanooga winning in three straight games (30-27, 30-20, 30-25). Sophomore Erica Short led the team with 18 kills, and freshman Allison Regas contributed 22 assists.\nIU set six career highs Saturday morning, beating Mercer University in four games (30-22, 27-30, 30-19, 30-20). The team set a school record for hitting percentage in the match by hitting .400. Short set two career bests in kills (25) and digs (17). \nJuniors Gabrielle Allison, Annie Moddrell and Caitlin Watts and sophomore Emily Zulauf also set career bests in the match. Allison, Moddrell and Zulauf notched the most kills of their careers, while Watts and Regas posted the most sets of their careers. \nThe Hoosiers closed the tournament Saturday night with a sweep over Southern Methodist University (30-26, 30-24, 30-24) to win the tournament. Watts led the team with 22 assists while senior Sara Diehl contributed 17 digs.\nShort was announced the tournament's most valuable player, her second tourney MVP honor of the year. Also, junior Lauren Ditteon was announced to the all-tournament team.\n"I'm proud (of my second MVP)," Short said. "But I couldn't do it without my teammates."\nThe teammates helped all around as 10 different players recorded kills and 11 different players recorded digs this weekend. Sophomore Juli Pierce also contributed two service aces in the three games of the tournament, a stat that didn't go unnoticed.\n"I felt like we were progressive with our serves," Weismiller said. "Our serving had (the other teams) out of system a lot. Juli ran quite a string of points off of her jump serve. She was really on."\nWatts agreed the serving progressively got better throughout the three matches. She said she also thought the match against SMU was one of the team's best this year but understands that the team still has room to improve.\nThe Hoosiers look to take the momentum to their Big Ten openers in Michigan this weekend when the team takes on Michigan and then Michigan State.\n"This (tournament win) will carry into practice this week and into this weekend," Watts said. "Ending on a good win like this is just more fire for us to have. It's a great confidence booster"