It definitely didn’t come easily, but in the end the Saint Louis University volleyball team defeated Illinois State University 3-2 (24-30, 30-23, 23-30, 30-28, 15-11) Tuesday night at the Bauman-Eberhardt Center.
Early in the first game, the score was tight. ISU began to pull away, pushing the lead to 19-13. The Billikens chipped away at the lead, bringing the deficit down to 19-17, only to have the Redbirds rally to win the game 30-24.
SLU drew even in the second game, where they scored the game’s first three points before a string of ISU points tied the score.
The score was relatively even throughout the game until late in the match, when the Billikens rallied to build a lead. One of the high points of this stretch came when junior Jessica Poorbaugh dug out a spike from an ISU player and, seconds later, junior Tatyana Menshikova registered the kill for a 23-19 lead.
SLU continued that run, winning the second game 30-23 and knotting the match at 1-1.
In the match’s third game, both teams traded the lead for most of the game.
With the score tied at 18, the Redbirds rallied and went on to take the game 30-23 and put themselves within one game of winning the match.
The Billikens fought hard to prevail in the fourth game. The score was very close throughout the entire game, even at the end. Sophomore Sutton Lasater kept the Billikens in the lead with a spike and a block to give SLU 24-23 and 26-24 leads, respectively. With the score tied 28-28, a net violation called on ISU gave SLU a game point situation.
On the next point, freshman Lauren Christman came up with a block at the net to win the game for SLU 30-28, sending the match to a deciding fifth game.
The Billikens started the final game on fire, getting off to a 5-1 lead, with the final tally in the sequence coming on an ace by Erin McClanahan.
The Redbirds worked to close the gap, but the closest they came was 13-10. On match point, Menshikova put an exclamation point on a SLU victory with a thunderous kill.
With the win, SLU improves to 7-9 overall, while the loss drops ISU to 6-6.
Menshikova had a dominant night, registering 32 kills, while senior Lauren Boissevain had 67 assists.
This hard-fought win was no surprise for SLU’s coaches and players, who knew they would have a tough match on their hands.
“We came into it knowing that it was going to be a battle, and that’s exactly what it was,” SLU head coach Anne Kordes said after the game. “We had to be very competitive throughout the match.”
Over the weekend, the Billikens played their first Atlantic 10 Conference matches in school history.
Both games, against Temple University on Friday and at LaSalle University on Sunday, were played in Philadelphia.
Temple was not a gracious host to the Billikens, as they defeated SLU in three consecutive games, 30-20, 30-28 and 31-29 to hand the Billikens a loss in their A-10 opener.
Two days later, SLU made sure they exited the city of brotherly love with their first win in the A-10 Conference, as they beat the Explorers 3-0 (30-14, 30-28, 30-15).
The recent beginning of the conference season is cause for excitement for SLU coaches and players; the team hopes to benefit from tougher non-conference opponents at the beginning of the season.
“We’re really excited that we’re finally into conference play,” Kordes said. “We challenged ourselves like no other SLU team has before with our non-conference schedule, and I think we’ve gotten better because of that.”
