IU defeats DePaul, Purdue during home tournament

The IU men's club volleyball team hosted the seventh annual Hoosier Fall Classic Oct. 7 in the HPER Wildermuth Gym. Twenty teams made the trip to Bloomington to participate in the day-long preseason event.\nIU welcomed teams from all over the Midwest and around the country, including Big Ten rivals Illinois and Purdue. \nThe Illinois A squad team won the tournament.\nThe tournament consisted of group play, followed by an elimination tournament. In the group stage, IU defeated DePaul University (25-15, 25-17), held on to beat Purdue B (25-20, 26-24) and then fell to the IU alumni team (26-24, 25-21). These initial matches gave IU the opportunity to work out potential lineups and get everyone match experience, sophomore John McSorley said. \n"We played pretty well in the first two matches," McSorley said after the Purdue B match. "We let up a little bit during the second game against Purdue. The important part, though, was that everyone got a chance to get in there. We were testing out lineups to see if we could find the right combination."\nAfter group play, IU advanced into the gold bracket of the playoffs. The team was unable to advance past the first round game against Purdue. After losing the first match, the Hoosiers fought back to win the second match. However, IU came up just short in a competitive third match, with Purdue winning the game 25-18, 14-25, 15-13.\nArmy senior Kyle Vonderheide said this was a new experience for the squad.\n"This was our first time at the competition," Vonderheide said. "We wanted to experience the Midwest competition. It's very different than what we get playing on the East Coast. We're just trying to develop fundamentals that come in handy during the regular season."\nThe Vanderbilt University team made the trip from Tennessee to experience the competition the Midwest has to offer. \n"There's a better level of play in the Midwest than what we usually go up against," Vanderbilt coach Ken Debelak said. "We wanted to play some good teams and have fun in the process."\nAlthough the loss was disappointing, the IU team was able to concentrate on what it needs to work on before the regular season, senior Alex Lepp said. \n"We weren't stressing too much on the results of the matches," Lepp said. "We were focused on finding team chemistry and figuring out what we need to improve on. Defensively, we need to improve overall, and we need to find out a way to dig more hard balls. On offense, we need more attacks from the middle and right side."\nIU will travel to Miami University of Ohio and Illinois in November to continue to prepare for regular season play.