Laura Doornbos had 14 kills and four blocks to help Illinois State tie a school record with its 16th straight home-court victory with a 30-22, 30-28, 30-23 over Southern Illinois in a Missouri Valley Conference volleyball match at Redbird Arena.
Illinois State coach Sharon Dingman thinks the home-match record is one her team can be proud of .
That will be a really special record, said Dingman, whose team will try to break the record at 7 p.m. Saturday against Evansville. There have been so many really good teams at Illinois State. When you think of how many great teams theyve had here, I think our players will look back on and be proud that they set a home-court winning streak record.
The Redbirds, 13-5, 6-2, beat the Salukis for the 52nd time in 57 matches and extended their regular-season winning streak over the Salukis to 26 in a row. The Birds also have won 11 straight Valley matches at home.
The Salukis, 5-14, 3-5, got 11 kills from Jaime Hisenkamp, but was out-hit .262 to .088 and out-blocked 9-4 for the match. SIU coach Sonya Locke hoped her team could keep ISU out of its offense.
Our goal is to always keep a team out of system and we had (ISU setter) Kelly (Rikli) chasing the ball, but we couldnt do a lot with it on our side of the net, said SIU coach Sonya Locke. To beat Illinois State, you have to shut down the team. They are balanced and have a lot of players who can hurt you. We just needed to be balanced defensively and we just didnt do that today.
After a Saluki service error to start the match, Paige White served seven more, three of which led to Doornbos kills, to give the Redbirds a quick 8-0 lead in game one. White served three more points later in the game as the Redbirds used a .316 to .054 hitting edge to win the game by eight.
Paige did a really nice job, said Dingman. She can get us on a run and has done that several times recently. We blocked well and havent been blocking well of late.
ISU led early in game two because of SIU hitting errors, but the Salukis used a Redbird service error and three straight hitting errors to tie the game at 15-15. The teams traded points until 19-19 when the Salukis reeled-off four straight to take control at 24-20
At that point, Savannah Knowles had just two kills for the match, but she busted the SIU block for four kills in the next six ISU points, with the Birds taking the lead 26-25 on a Maura McCarthy service ace and took a 2-0 lead in the match.
That ace was huge, said Dingman, who also used Amber Rogers and Lindley McDavid late in games off the bench. Mauras a courageous kid and shell always go for it. Our bench was focused. They made me look great.
It was nice to see our left sides get some kills, said Dingman. We think they learned from our recent matches. I give our middles a lot of credit. They put up a great block.
The third game was tied 13 times in the first 14 points before Kari Staehlin smashed an overpass for the first of three straight ISU points to get a 17-14 lead for the Birds, who never trailed again.
