Jenny Kabbes had 17 kills and the Illinois State volleyball team had five players in double figures in kills for the first time this season, but still fell to Georgia 25-30, 30-24, 28-30, 30-20, 18-16 in a five-game match Saturday at the Disney Conference Challenge.
Staci Boyce and Erin Jones folowed with 12 kills each, Laura Doornbos had 11 and Emily Kabbes added 10 for the Redbirds, who finish the season 14-15. Alexandra Oquendo led the Bulldogs, 20-15, with 21 kills. Doornbos had five of Illinois State's seven service aces and Jenny Kabbes led the Redbird blockers with five.
Even though the Bulldogs had more kills (70-63), more digs (60-53), more blocks (13-7) and more service aces (10-7), the Redbirds still had a shot to win the match against a team which took No. 8 Northern Iowa to five games the previous day.
"We came out and competed with Georgia today," said Dingman, who wasn't happy with her team's performance the day before. "It was a good way to end the season. I think we got a lot out of it, learning about competing and going against the best competition."
Northern Iowa won the tournament, which pitted two Missouri Valley teams against two from the Southeastern Conference, by upsetting No. 3 Florida in five games. The Panthers, 32-2, would find out their NCAA Tournament seed Sunday.
Over the course of the ISU-Georgia match, Jones became just the fifth Redbird player reach 1,000 career digs. Her 15 led the Redbirds against Georgia and gave her 1,004 for her career. It was the final match for Jones and Jenny Kabbes, who ended her career with 533 total blocks including 460 block assists--both No. 2 in Redbird history.
Although the Redbirds finished the season with three straight losses and their first losing record since 1986, Redbird coach Sharon Dingman takes a lot of satisfaction from a season in which a young team (six freshmen, three sophomores) played one of the nation's toughest non-conference schedules and six matches against nationally-ranked teams.
"People looking in from the outside will gage the wins and losses, but this team had a tremendous amount of success which didn't show up in wins and losses," said Dingman. "This weekend was another example of that. There are a lot of ways to define success. One of our goals, with this schedule, was to find out what it would take to be where we want to be. We this kind of competition, now we know and it will help the younger players in the future."
