Continuing with their all-points tour of the lower 48, the Saint
Louis University volleyball team is traveling yet again this
weekend, this time to the Evergreen State in the great Northwest to
partake in the Cougar Mania Tournament in Pullman, Wash., hosted by
Washington State.

“This is just another part of our extremely tough pre-conference
schedule.

We knew this would be a tough schedule when we made it but it is
really turning out to be a lot tougher than we expected,” said
coach Marilyn Nolen.

The Billikens will take on the host Cougars in their first game
of the tournament Friday at 9 pm.

The Cougars were ranked in the top 25 early in the season and
are threatening to break into it again with a strong showing this
weekend.

From there, the Bills will play their second game of the
tournament, at noon on Saturday, against a very dangerous
Loyola-Marymount squad.

“Loyola knocked off UC-Santa Barbara in a tournament a couple of
weeks ago and Santa Barbara was ranked in the top 10 at the time,
so this tournament has all of the sudden become pretty packed with
some stiff competition,” Nolen said.

To round out the tournament, the Bills will take on the Lobos of
New Mexico at 7 p.m. Saturday night.

SLU will rely heavily on their solid outside hitting,
particularly Ashley Hunter and Angela Powers, who each came on
strong in last week’s tournament in Springfield. Powers, in fact,
played well enough to earn herself a starting spot. Hunter,
meanwhile, continued her solid season, leading the tournament in
hitting and in digs.

“We are still waiting for the final statistics to come from last
week’s tournament but Ashley was definitely a very bright spot for
us last weekend,” Nolen said.

Indeed, SLU needed all of the bright spots they could get during
last weekend’s tournament. They dropped all four matches to a group
of extremely solid and well-rounded teams.

“It is really important for us to come out and play strong. We
started off a bit tentative in the last tournament and we did not
really start playing with much confidence until our last match,”
Nolen said.

The Bills started off the tourney last Friday against well
enough, taking the first game against an undefeated North Texas
team, due largely to the play of Hunter, who had five kills and
nine digs. But North Texas came out strong in game two to even the
match and closed out the match with two more wins to win, three
games to one. It was more of the same for the Billikens in the
second and third matches of the tourney, when they were swept by
the host Bears of Southwest Missouri State and their neighbors to
the south, Arkansas. But the Billikens finally started to gain some
confidence in the final match.

However, it was against national power Brigham Young University
and the Billikens were able to take the first game in a close 32-30
decision, but then dropped the final three games and the match.

“It was important for us to take a game off of BYU. We were a
bit insecure but finally got it together for that match,” Nolen
said.

The Bills took that confidence and brought it home Tuesday
night, when they hosted Western Illinois. Proving to be a rude
host, the Bills swept Western in a powerful display of hitting and
defense.

“I am pleased with how we looked Tuesday night. This whole
pre-conference schedule is giving us the opportunity to get better
and improve for the Conference USA season,” Nolen said.

The win improved the Bills record to 3-6 on the season heading
up to the Washington State tournament. They won’t be back in action
at home until the end of the month and the beginning of October,
when they begin their conference season at home against
Memphis.

Between now and then, the Billikens have yet another tournament,
this time in Bloomington, Ind., in the Indiana University
Invitational, where they will face Indiana, Western Kentucky and
Austin Peay. They also will have a Tuesday night match, on the
road, against Bradley, in Peoria Ill.

But first things first. And that means another tough test in the
great Northwest.