Northern Iowa continues its dominance of Wichita State volleyball

Volleyballs don’t easily hit the floor against Northern Iowa and Wichita State knows all about that after losing 11 of its previous 13 matches to the Panthers.

Friday’s match at Koch Arena played out similarly. To beat the Panthers, a team needs to meet or exceed their level of hustle and tenacity and WSU could not, especially in the final two sets of a 3-1 (21-25, 25-19, 19-25, 13-25) loss.

UNI (9-6, 4-0 Missouri Valley Conference) won for the sixth straight time at Koch Arena and dumped WSU (9-6, 3-2) into fourth place in the Valley. With two home losses already, the Shockers will spend the next 13 matches battling uphill.

“I gauge so much on facial expressions,” WSU coach Chris Lamb said. “I think I know when people look like they’re ready to fight and when they’re ready to get scared and I saw some of that tonight. Getting your tail whipped in front of (a home crowd) can be a tough nut to swallow.”

The Panthers took control in the third set after allowing the Shockers to hit .394 in the second set. WSU finished the match hitting .179 and .059 to finish at .192. UNI’s back row controlled the match by keeping balls alive and frustrating the Shockers even when they got one-on-one looks.

“Northern Iowa did a fantastic job touching more balls than we did on defense,” WSU right-side Mikaela Raudsepp said.

WSU’s digging failed to match up and the Panthers cranked up their scoring as the match wore on.

“We couldn’t put the ball away,” Lamb said. “I bragged about their ability to dig around one blocker all week. That was an example of better diggers. I told our (defensive specialists) and our libero that they are a couple years behind Northern Iowa. We could not keep up with them back there.”

Lamb replayed several hard shots that the Panthers dug and several that the Shockers couldn’t rescue, some of them not particularly well struck.

“For most of the game, it had to do with intensity, energy, but most of all effort,” WSU libero Dani Mostrom said. “We’re going to have to fight hard for a rally and win it. They did that very well.”

The Panthers stitched together their shutdown performance without libero Amie Held, who had surgery for a knee infection this week.

“We had to change a lot in our backcourt and I thought our blocking stepped up,” UNI coach Bobbi Petersen said. “We had trouble defending the pins. But I thought our players did a nice job, especially at the end of Game 3, adjusting to that.”

Raudsepp finished with 15 kills. Middle Katie Reilly added 11 and hit .455. Middle Abbie Lehman contributed seven kills in the first two sets and finished with nine. The rest of WSU’s attackers struggled to penetrate UNI’s block or elude the back row.

“Our passing broke down and our attempts got predictable,” Lamb said. “They were very prepared to deal with our outside hitters.”

Outside hitter Leigh Pudwill led the Panthers with 15 kills and hit .481. Eryca Hingtgen added 12 kills.

This story was originally published October 3, 2014 at 10:19 PM with the headline "Northern Iowa continues its dominance of Wichita State volleyball."