No. 13 Penn State women’s volleyball lost to Illinois 3-1 (25-20, 23-25, 25-27, 22-25) Saturday evening at Rec Hall despite hitting .327 against the Illini.
Jonni Parker led all players with 23 kills and nine digs in the loss, while Kaitlyn Hord turned in another extremely efficient performance with 16 kills on a .625 hitting percentage. After a nine-kill outing in her return to the court against Wisconsin, Erika Pritchard got the start at outside hitter for the Nittany Lions versus Illinois and finished with 10 kills and nine attack errors.
Gabby Blossom put together an impressive showing with a match-high 56 assists and 19 digs, while Jenna Hampton added 18 digs and six assists of her own. Russ Rose called Illinois one of the Big Ten’s top offensive teams during his Tuesday press conference, and the Illini had several playmakers step up. Raina Terry and Megan Cooney combined for 31 kills for Illinois.
The Nittany Lions (15-7, 8-4 Big Ten) return to Rec Hall next weekend for a pair of matches against Michigan and Michigan State. Penn State will meet the Wolverines on Friday at 7:30 p.m., then the program will host its second Silent Set match against the Spartans the following night at 7 p.m.
Russ Rose’s opening statement:
“Well, I mean, I thought it was well-played, competitive match. I thought we started well and had opportunities to win the second game and opportunities to win the third game. Illinois was able to not only prevent that, they were able to score the points necessary. I thought a couple of our kids played really hard, but I don’t know if I’d say they played well. I’m certainly disappointed, but I also recognize that everybody in the Big Ten is good. You can tell by Illinois’ celebration that it meant a lot to them. I think it meant more to them than it did to us.”
Coach, what shifted after that first set?
“Well, we missed a number of serves. I think they’re an aggressive serving team and we just made so many service errors. If you’re making seven or eight errors a game, you’re going to have a hard time winning. Certainly, we had opportunities. I think we went from the first game hitting .400 — and we still hit .380 [in the second set], but they hit .414. In the first game, they didn’t have very many kills. Even though we missed five serves, we had 18 kills. In the second game, when they picked up getting some kills, that kind of changed the complexion of things. We had some players make bad plays at key times. You can’t miss your serve when you have game point or within one or two. We did that two or three times tonight.”
Jonni, what’s your message to the team heading into practice next week?
“We can’t let one become two. We learned from that play we had right there. We hold ourselves responsible and accountable for what we can control and we’ve got to get in next week and get to work. We have to grind, especially heading into the rest of the season. Here on out, the Big Ten is a tough schedule and then NCAAs. We have a lot of work to do. I think that’s my message is we have to stick together and grind and work hard.”
Kaitlyn, what did Illinois do well tonight?
“I think they’re really good servers. They also blocked really well. I think we served a bit easy closer to the end of the match, so it made it a lot easier for them to read what we were doing and just kind of block well. I think serving and blocking is what really kept them in the match.”
Rose: “I thought they could run their middle. I thought when they started running middle, that’s when things changed a great deal.”
How do you rally the troops heading into next weekend?
Rose: “Well, I mean, I’ve never been responsible for rallying the troops. It’s their team. They understand the expectations. People need to be accountable and responsible for what they’re supposed to do– coaches, players. Illinois is very good. We had two tough matches with them last year. We beat them in five and then beat them in four. Both of those matches were really competitive, as was this one. They’re a great opponent. Players have to understand the importance of competing hard all the time. I think that’s something that these individuals did. And again, I thought some people competed hard, but I don’t think they necessarily played well. A couple of the newcomers were a little disappointing.”