SIU sweeps Wichita State volleyball to grab share of first place

Wichita State’s chance to grab the outright Missouri Valley Conference volleyball title slipped away quickly and convincingly on Friday night. The Shockers gave themselves no time to pout.

Southern Illinois swept Wichita State (25-23, 25-20, 25-22) at Koch Arena to pull into a tie atop the MVC with one match remaining.

WSU (23-8, 14-3 MVC) meets ninth-place Evansville on Saturday, a nice safety net provided by a team the Shockers are 27-1 against since 2001. SIU (23-7, 14-3) bused five hours after the match to play at third-place Missouri State. The Shockers share the title with a win and claim it all for themselves if SIU loses.

“We were really positive in the locker room,” senior Katie Reilly said. “We deserve to win a conference championship (Saturday), no matter what they do. Short memory. Know that we still deserve to win a conference championship and that’s still possible.”

SIU swept the season series from the Shockers for the first time since 1995. There will be a time to revisit Friday’s shortcomings (and a 3-2 loss at SIU) as the teams prepare for next week’s MVC Tournament.

“We’ll pick it up in a couple days when we need to analyze it again, because I’m sure we’re going to see them one more time,” Reilly said.

Should the teams meet again on Nov. 28 in Springfield, Mo., Wichita State’s outside hitters will need to produce. SIU’s blocking schemes took Mikaela Raudsepp and Shimen Fayad out of the match. Raudsepp finished with seven kills and seven errors; Fayad with two and three.

“Our block, from the first set, established itself as something that was taking the right position and, perhaps, forcing attackers into things they didn’t want to do,” SIU coach Justin Ingram said.

That left WSU’s offense short-handed.

“If you’re going to be in the 5-1, you better get scoring from five people,” WSU coach Chris Lamb said. “We got scoring from three people.”

Middle Abbie Lehman led WSU with 14 kills and a .609 attack percentage and Reilly added nine kills and hit .438. SIU’s Andrea Estrada recorded 12 kills and middle Taylor Pippen added nine with a .562 attack percentage.

As Ingram said, SIU’s blocking took control from the start. The Salukis scored their first two points on blocks and their next two on attack errors.

“Once the ball goes out there on the left side, I don’t think there’s a team in the conference that’s more capable of dealing with it,” Lamb said. “The score was 7-7 they had one kill. They stuff-blocked us three or four times in the first seven points. They came out and had us going backwards offensively.”

WSU stumbled through the first set with seven attack errors and three service errors. It closed to within 21-20 before a kill by Pippen, an attack error by Katy Dudzinski and a kill by Abby Barrow. Pippen ended the set with a kill for a 25-23 win.

The Shockers faded again late in the second set after cutting a 19-14 deficit to 19-18. SIU responded with four straight points, started by a kill by Meg Viggars that hit the tape on the end line. Shannon Hagen followed with a kill and Andrea Estrada with an ace that WSU’s Gabi Mostrom couldn’t handle. A bad set by Emily Hiebert gave SIU a 23-19 lead and the Salukis finished it off 25-20.

The third set followed the same pattern — SIU led, WSU rallied and SIU pulled away. The Shockers tied it 22-all on an SIU attack error. Pippen smoked a ball by WSU’s Dani Mostrom to start a 3-0 run that ended the match.

This story was originally published November 20, 2015 at 9:44 PM with the headline "SIU sweeps Wichita State volleyball to grab share of first place."