While some coaches claim you never learn anything from a loss, Illinois State volleyball coach
Sharon Dingman believes her team will be able to find some benefit in its 3-0 Tuesday loss at DePaul in time for Fridays home match with Drake and Saturdays with Creighton. Both matches begin at 7 p.m.
Drake runs a fast offense like DePaul, said Dingman, whose Redbirds are 9-7 overall and 5-3 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Its good that we saw that. Now we can better defend it.
With a 5-12 overall mark and 1-8 in the Valley, Dingman believes Drake has played better than the record shows.
They took a game (last weekend) off (No. 16-ranked) Northern Iowa, and not many teams have been able to do that, said Dingman. The Bulldogs also took the first game from the Redbirds last month, and were ahead late in game two before the Birds rallied to win that game and the next two. But it was a struggle.
The Birds have some evening-up to do with Creighton, 8-8 overall, 7-2 in the Valley. Behind the hot hitting of Lisa Meekins, Creighton took a five-game match from Illinois State Sept. 21 in Omaha.
Lisa Meekins was just huge for Creighton, said Dingman. We will certainly give her more attention.
Setter Kailey Reyes and freshman middle blocker Ashley Williams help give the Jays a balanced attack around all-conference outside hitter Melissa Walsh, who is No. 3 in the league in kills per game. Creighton also has the leagues service ace leader in Molly Moran, who is just ahead of ISUs Becky Weber in aces per game.
But Dingman typically believes teams have to control what happens on their side of the net to be successful and this weekend is no exception.
We have to have more offense from all positions, said Dingman, whose middle blockers scored consistently at DePaul, but the left- and right-side hitters struggled to get kills. Mo (
Megan O'Connell),
Erin (Jones) and
Abby (Lewis) all will have to step up this weekend because we need them.
