“Just win baby.”
Al Davis coined the phrase and the Saint Louis University volleyball team is living up to it.
They proved that Tuesday night when they traveled down Interstate 55 to Cape Girardeau, Mo., and squared off against the Otakians of Southeast Missouri State University.
While the team was dazzling at some points, they did have their share of dips too. However, the important thing was the final score.
“We didn’t play at our peak at all times against SEMO. We played well in the first, third and last games but were kind of slacking in the second and fourth games. We knew what it would take to win, though, and we got it done,” head coach Marilyn Nolen said.
The first four game scores were 30-25, 31-33, 30-19, and 32-34, thus necessitating a final game played to 15. In the final game, the Bills were tied 8-8 with the Otakians,until SLU pulled away at the end to take the match, 15-11.
The Bills were led, as always, by Colleen Hunter, who collected 25 kills in the five-match marathon. Ember Knobeloch also took charge of the net, notching 23 kills for the match.
Beth Middendorf controlled the floor for the Billikens, dishing out 60 assists. Brook Minnear led the team in digs, with 16.
Although the Bills do have a solid group of assembled talent, they have been searching for the right supporting cast for the better part of the first 10 matches of the season. The match against SEMO and a tournament in Northern Illinois went a long way in helping to determine how the Bills will proceed.
The Bills used the help of a few subs like Megan Sorich, Lauren Boissevain, Ashley Hunter and Kayla Kmitta in the fifth set against SEMO to make their push to the victory. Also, Jessica Kmitta solidified a spot on the floor for herself, with a solid performance both last weekend in the tournament and again Tuesday night.
The Bills took some high hopes with them to DeKalb, Ill., last weekend and were just a match short of following through.
The team notched back-to-back 3-1 match wins against Wisconsin-Green Bay and Mississippi State before falling in the title match to the host team from Northern Illinois.
After the Bills dropped the first two games of the match, they rallied back to tie the match at two to force a fifth game. But the team ran out of juice and ended up dropping the final game 15-7.
“It’s human nature to let down after two great matches. In fairness though, Northern Illinois had a lot of support. Between their crowd yelling and screaming and their band being behind them it was very overwhelming,” Nolen said.
This weekend the Bills will take to the road yet again for one last tournament before they begin their conference schedule at the end of the month.
This time the tournament is in the opposite side of the state–Southwest Missouri State University.
SLU will face off against the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Wichita State and Southwest Missouri State.
“We are preparing the same way we have the past couple of weeks. We’ll head down there Friday and play a game, then wrap up the tournament on Saturday. If everything goes the way we have planned and the way the tournament has planned then we should be playing SMS for the title Saturday night, based on our seedings,” Nolen said.
The first Billiken home game since the beginning of this month will be next Wednesday at 6 p.m. against the University of Loyola-Chicago, a team that is making a strong case to break into the top 20.
The Bills then head down to New Orleans to finally start their conference schedule against Tulane, 16 games into the season.
