The Illinois State-Northern Iowa volleyball rivalry features the two teams with the most wins in the history of the Missouri Valley Conference. One or both of those two teams has won or shared the league title in each of the past 19 years. But Sundays 6 p.m. match at the West Gym in Cedar Falls has taken on a focus all its own.
If the Panthers can get by Indiana State on Friday, they will go into Sundays match with 62 straight home court wins. That would tie the NCAA record, currently held by Nebraska, for consecutive home-court volleyball wins. So the Redbird-Panther match has national record-breaking potential. Ironically, the last UNI home-court defeat was Illinois States 3-1 win Oct. 31, 1997 in West Gym.
That was ISUs second straight win at UNI. The previous year, the Birds snapped a 50-match home-court streak by beating the Panthers which dated back to 1992. The last loss before that mid-1990s Panther streak also was to Illinois State, so its possible the Redbirds, who just last week became the ninth NCAA Divison I volleyball program to record 800 wins, could be the bookends on two of the longest home-court winning streaks in college volleyball history.
Additionally, it will be the first nationally-televised appearance for the Missouri Valley Conference on CSTV, the College Sports Television Network. On the air only six months, CSTV, as its name indicates, is a college-sports-only network in the process of reaching out to cable operations for air space.
In addition, the UNI-ISU match is one of a 20-match broadcast live by WJBC, the flagship station for Redbird sports, either on AM 1230 or webcast on wjbc.com. Sundays match will be live on AM 1230, WJBC radio, with R.C. McBride and Greg Halbleib calling the action. WJBC has carried Redbird volleyball for 11 years.
Like most new networks, CSTV is working for more air space on cable. CSTV already appears nationally on DirecTV Channel 610.
The negotiation process with cable providers is on-going, said CSTV publicist Eric Handler, but viewers are excited about the programming we are providing.
Handler said CSTV has a national agreement with Insight Cable, but local cable operators still make the final decisions about what to carry.
Local cable subscribers who call their cable operators and ask about CSTV probably have the best chance of seeing the channel as part of a cable package, said Handler.
Kevin Eschenfelter and Heather Cox are the announcers for Sundays match, which is the third of a 13-week national volleyball Match of the Week series which CSTV calls Sunday Night Spikes. The first match of the series featured Florida at Stanford Sept. 7, followed by Pepperdine at Pacific Sept. 14.
