IU volleyball will travel for two matches this weekend to take on No. 22 Illinois (13-6, 6-2) Friday night in Champaign, Illinois, and Northwestern (7-13, 0-8) Sunday afternoon in Evanston, Illinois.
After facing No. 10 Penn State last Saturday, IU, with a record of 13-8, 2-6, is slated to take on yet another top-25 team in Illinois. The Hoosiers are still looking for their first win against a ranked opponent this season.
“Any win is important right now,” IU Coach Sherry Dunbar-Kruzan said. “We play a lot of ranked teams, and we are going to have to upset some of them to reach our goals. We are going to put it out there Friday night.”
Dunbar-Kruzan said she noticed an increased intensity in practice this week amongst her team.
She said she believes that the extra competitiveness in the gym will greatly benefit the players as they prepare to face yet another tough Big Ten school.
The 10th-year coach said the team’s standards are rising, which is important to the improvement of any team.
“It was not just sweating a lot. There was actually work going into it,” Dunbar-Kruzan said. “I’m happy that we have remotivated and have found some really good practice opportunities to raise the level in the gym. The more you work in the practice gym and the more you feel like you are getting better, the better you are going to feel going into a Friday night match at Illinois in a very tough environment.”
Two IU seniors reached career milestones in their last match. Senior libero Taylor Lebo surpassed 1,000 digs and become the 13th Hoosier to do so, and senior outside hitter Allison Hammond tallied her 300th dig.
Hammond is also just 14 kills away from 600 for her career. She is seventh in the Big Ten in kills per set, with 3.78, and is already only nine kills short of her kill total from last year, 251.
Junior outside hitter Jessica Leish refuses to downplay the magnitude of what a win to open the weekend would do for the Hoosiers.
“With the work we have been putting in and with what we have been through this season, beating a ranked opponent is exactly what we need and exactly what we deserve,” Leish said. “Illinois is an awesome team, and to be able to go there and get an away win after all of the work would be huge for us and huge for the rest of our season.”
Sunday’s match will be the second meeting of 2016 between the Hoosiers and the Wildcats.
In the first bout, IU defeated Northwestern 3-1 by set scores of 25-16, 25-19, 25-27 and 25-20 on Sept. 24 in Bloomington to commence the Big Ten portion of the schedule.
“Our big expectation is just to compete with the teams we play with,” sophomore defensive specialist Samantha Fogg said. “We have been saying ‘Be winners out there’ a lot, and going in with that mentality is going to give us that win and a good weekend overall.”
Sunday’s 4 p.m. contest at Northwestern is the first of IU’s two televised matches this season and will be broadcast live on Big Ten Network.
Dunbar-Kruzan preaches the importance of confidence when facing a team for the second time in the last month.
“We have to go 1-1 this weekend, but we hope to go 2-0,” Dunbar-Kruzan said. “That’s how you have to think, mentality-wise, because we want the kids to have a winner’s mentality. We are back on track as far as competing in the gym to raise the level every day to get us ready to play those types of opponents.”
