Somewhere Marv Levy and the rest of the Buffalo Bills from the
early ’90s are smiling.

Tuesday night, the Saint Louis University Volleyball team
traveled up to Peoria, Ill. to take on the Bradley Braves. The
final score was three games to none. It was seemingly a blowout;
but it wasn’t. The Billikens lost those three games by a grand
total of six points-in other words, the bare minimum. The final
game scores were 30-28, 30-28 and 31-29 and each game was at one
point tied 28-28.

"It was pretty frustrating. We just could not finish, and it’s
especially tough because all of those games were games we could
have won," said junior outside hitter Jessica Kmitta.

The tight loss was all the more painful because the Bills had more
digs and blocks than the Braves, and also because Ashley Hunter,
Kayla Kmitta and Erin McClanahan each had career days. Hunter tied
her career high with 17 kills, Kmitta chipped in five blocks and 11
kills, giving her a hitting percentage of .410, and McClanahan had
a season-high of 48 assists. "We have watched a lot of film
and have seen what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong.
Now we are just working on fixing our mistakes and learning how to
finish,," Kmitta said.

To make matters worse, the loss drops the Bills to 6-10 on the
season, which is all the more important seeing as that they only
have one more game, to be played on Tuesday, against
Tennessee-Martin, before the Conference USA season begins against
Memphis, one week from tomorrow.

The UT-Martin Skyhawks might be just the team the Bills need to
have visiting as their final tune-up for their demanding C-USA
schedule, as the Skyhawks are coming to SLU with two wins and 12
losses. The Skyhawks, like the Billikens, are in the midst of a
rebuilding year.

The Memphis Tigers, on the other hand, are an entirely different
story. Memphis is coming into to town riding a 12-game winning
streak, their only loss coming in the last weekend of August
against Arkansas State.

The Tigers have had their fair share of close games this season.
However, they have been able to suck it up when it counts and pull
away with some victories, most recently last week against Middle
Tennessee State, when the Tigers went up two games to none early
but dropped the next two and let Middle Tennessee back in the
match, before finally picking up the slack and putting the match
away in the fifth and deciding game.

The Billikens will host the Skyhawks at the Bauman-Eberhart Center
for an early Tuesday night game, starting at 6 p.m. instead of the
usual 7 p.m. to more easily fit into the nightly television lineup.
The Bills game will be televised on Charter Tuesday night. However,
next Friday the Bills will move back to their normal time slot of 7
p.m., to once again compete with ABC’s TGIF lineup.

Televised Home Match
Who: UT-Martin Skyhawks
When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Where: Bauman-Eberhart Center and on Charter Cable,
CCIN.