Wichita State volleyball travels to Iowa for rematches

Wichita State’s volleyball team lost its home opener to Illinois State and started Missouri Valley Conference play 0-1 after the sweep. Two weeks later, Northern Iowa came to Koch Arena and won.

The Shockers aren’t used to losing, especially at home. They aren’t used to falling into a hole in the conference standings in early October. All along, however, they vowed to be a better team in the second half of Valley play. Now is WSU’s chance to prove it. The Shockers (14-7, 8-3 MVC) play at Drake (9-12, 1-9) on Friday before the rematch with UNI (14-8, 8-2) on Saturday.

All the freshmen and sophomores are more experienced and all the new roles are more comfortable for WSU. Six freshmen, including both setters, play regularly.

“The begining-of-the-season jitters definitely happened early on,” freshman attacker Mikaela Raudsepp said. “We were still developing how to play together and how to adjust to playing with different people on the floor.”

WSU’s offensive numbers show improvement, even as coach Chris Lamb is experimenting with a two-setter rotation in recent weeks. The Shockers hit .300 or better in four straight matches and haven’t dropped under .200 since losing to UNI on Oct. 3. On Saturday, freshman middle Abbie Lehman matched an NCAA record with a 1.000 attack percentage, converting 15 kills on 15 swings. When the middle blockers are busy and efficient, states one of Lamb’s tenets, it means an offense is running crisply.

“We are starting to play a lot cleaner,” junior outside hitter Ashlyn Driskill said. “We’re starting to be smarter and more precise with what we do.”

WSU has won four straight matches, all sweeps, and are fourth in the MVC, one loss behind second-place Missouri State and third-place UNI. This is the time for the Shockers to improve their seeding for the conference tournament, where the top two seeds earn a bye into the semifinals.

“We’re a different team,” Raudsepp said. “We’re staying in rallies longer. We’re staying mentally in the game longer. It’s the extra points, the extra-effort points, that we’ve been training for for weeks now, that we didn’t necessarily have the reps in for earlier.”

Raudsepp, who started the previous 18 matches, missed WSU’s last three with a concussion. She practiced all week and will play this weekend. Raudsepp tried to make the best of the down time by observing practices and games.

“It made me look at the game from a different angle,” she said. “It opened my eyes to more situations and a different way to look at things.”

Reilly earns MVC award — WSU junior middle Katie Reilly is one of 10 MVC athletes recognized with Leadership and Service Award this fall. Reilly carries a 3.9 grade-point average in exercise science and is involved in activities such as Wyldlife, YoungLife, Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Habitudes.

WSU women picked fourth — The MVC cross country championships are Saturday in Carbondale, Ill., and WSU’s women are picked fourth and the men sixth. Bradley is the women’s favorite, defending champion Southern Illinois and Illinois State follow. WSU received 74 points. On the men’s side, Bradley is favored, followed by SIU and Indiana State.

This story was originally published October 30, 2014 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Wichita State volleyball travels to Iowa for rematches."