In the three games since, it has lost two games.
Hitting errors have plagued the team, and IU Coach Sherry Dunbar-Kruzan said she is trying to find a solution.
The solution isn’t necessarily about switching up volleyball X’s and O’s but adjusting the mentality of the team, Dunbar-Kruzan said.
“They have to be willing to say, ‘I didn’t play well,’” Dunbar-Kruzan said. “And they need to ask themselves what they need to change to help the team. Otherwise, you’re just kind of spinning your wheels.”
IU (7-2) will try and regroup this weekend when it hosts the Hoosier Classic. Buffalo (7-3), Western Illinois (2-8) and Butler (6-3) will all converge in Bloomington this weekend.
IU plays Buffalo at 7 p.m. Friday before playing two games against Western Illinois at noon and Butler at ?7 p.m. Saturday.
These will be the final non-conference games IU will play in the regular season. The Big Ten season begins Sept. 26.
IU has a chance to eclipse its win total from the 2013 season this weekend. Last season, IU went just 9-22 and 1-19 in the Big Ten.
In the two non-conference tournaments IU has played this season they swept both of them. They went 3-0 in the UConn Classic and the Indiana Invitational.
If IU sweeps this weekend’s games, they will have 10 wins and be sitting at eight games above .500 before conference play begins.
But Dunbar-Kruzan said she needs to see a vast level of improvement from her team before she sees them going 3-0 this weekend.
“They need to take some ownership,” Dunbar-Kruzan said about her team. “The coaching staff does, too. We all need to take ownership of the way we play.”
The team has expressed throughout the season how important being efficient is. Efficiency in volleyball means not making errors, whether that be in the service game or in kill attempts.
In the beginning part of the season, when IU went 6-0, IU could get by with skill and, even though the players weren’t hitting the ball efficiently, they were still ?winning.
Dunbar-Kruzan said at the time, even though IU was winning games, it needed to get its errors down.
Because when IU starts Big Ten play, it will be going against a much higher level of competition.
But IU hasn’t been able to limit the number of errors as the season has progressed.
IU actually recorded more kills than IUPUI during Wednesday night’s game. The Hoosiers lost in part because they had 32 hitting errors, while IUPUI had just 16.
Additionally, IU had 13 service errors while IUPUI had just six.
This has to change, Dunbar-Kruzan said.
But it isn’t an X’s and O’s type of change.
“We need to make a change,” Dunbar-Kruzan said. “Not so much a volleyball change — an emotional change about how you look at things. Right now.”
