Aug. 31, 2006
NORMAL, Ill. -
Fresh off their first win of the season, the Illinois State volleyball team will get back into tournament action this weekend by playing three non-conference matches at the Holiday Inn Select Rice Invitational in Houston, Texas. In the round-robin format, the `Birds will face Texas San-Antonio at 4:30 p.m. Friday; and their Saturday slate includes matches against DePaul (10 a.m.) and host Rice beginning at 6 p.m.
The match between the Redbirds and UTSA is the tournament opener, and also marks the first-ever meeting between the two programs. Illinois State and DePaul have met 24 total times, with the `Birds dominating the all-time series, 22-2. ISU owns a 2-1 all-time series edge over Rice.
Redbird head volleyball coach Sharon Dingman is anxious to see how her team stacks up against another competitive tournament field.
"We're looking forward to competing in another tournament," Dingman said. We don't know a whole lot about San Antonio yet, except that Wichita State played them last weekend. So we can look at some things statistically that Wichita was able to accomplish, but we're also a very different team than them. We definitely anticipate UTSA being a challenging first match of the tournament.
"DePaul will obviously be a much more familiar opponent for our team. We have played them a lot in the past, and faced them in the spring, so we are familiar with their program. Our players also played against a lot of theirs in high school and club. As for Rice, they are a senior-laden team and are definitely talented.
"What we are looking for is a better performance on the road. We have two huge road trips coming up, and definitely have to play better. I don't think we played bad last weekend, but we didn't play well enough to win. I think picking up our first win [Tuesday] will help us in that regard."
UTSA is off to a 3-2 start this season after posting wins over Syracuse, Louisiana Tech and SMU. They lost to Wichita State, 3-1, and were also defeated by Eastern Washington.
DePaul is 0-3 on the season after dropping decisions to UIC, Valparaiso, and Loyola-Chicago at last weekend's Chicagoland Classic. Rice is 1-2. They defeated Nicholls State, and suffered setbacks to host LSU and No. 2 Penn State at last weekend's LSU Tiger Classic in Baton Rouge, La.
