Podraza, Hannah Impress In Penn State Volleyball’s 3-2 Win Over Indiana

Posted on by Ethan Kasales

No. 14 Penn State women’s volleyball played its first five-set match of the season Friday night at Rec Hall, and came away with a victory over Indiana to improve to 61-1 in the all-time series between the two programs.

Mac Podraza and Camryn Hannah continued their strong play of late with 45 assists and 15 kills, respectively, in Penn State’s seventh straight win. Podraza added 12 digs, two total blocks, and a kill, while Hannah hit .324 and had five total blocks and a dig. Jess Mruzik had a match-high 19 kills and a team-high 15 digs, four total blocks, and three assists, but was held to a .143 hitting percentage.

The Nittany Lions (11-3, 5-0 Big Ten) wore pink ribbons in their hair to commemorate breast cancer awareness month. Penn State hit .209 to Indiana’s .194 Friday night, but the Nittany Lions out-blocked the Hoosiers 16-9 and decidedly won the service game. Indiana (12-6, 2-3 Big Ten) had 10 service errors and only one ace after entering the match as the conference’s top serving team.

Box Score

Junior outside hitter Anjelina Starck had one of the best matches of her Penn State career against the Hoosiers, finishing with eight kills, many of them at crucial moments, 11 digs, and a block. She hit .538 with only one attack error. Allie Holland had a match-high nine total blocks, five kills, three digs, and an ace. Podraza led the Nittany Lions to a .591 hitting percentage in a dominant second set, winning 25-9 to tie the match before the program recognized its 2013 NCAA national championship team.

Russ Rose, Taylor Krause, and Dominique (Gonzalez) Tomlin were warmly welcomed back to Rec Hall and posed for photos on the court, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Penn State’s sixth national title. The program will honor its 2008 championship team during Saturday’s match versus No. 24 Ohio State, which is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Big Ten Network.

Surprisingly, there were no tie scores or lead changes during the first four sets. After going down 4-2 and then 6-4 in the fifth, Penn State rallied back and capitalized on some untimely Indiana service errors. Up 12-10 following Hannah’s 15th kill of the match, Maddy Bilinovic delivered her second ace of the night, cuing a huge celebration from her teammates and the Rec Hall crowd. She also had six digs. Mruzik’s 19th kill followed before Holland and Podraza teamed up for an emphatic block to seal the win.

Alexa Markley had seven kills and a block against the Hoosiers, while Taylor Trammell added four total blocks, three kills, three digs, and zero attack errors despite only taking 12 swings. Mruzik took 10 more swings than the next-closest player Friday night with 49. It was Mruzik’s fifth double-double of the season and third in a row. Podraza, coming off Big Ten Setter of the Week honors, matched her season high with 12 digs for her third double-double with the Nittany Lions.

Sophomore libero Gill Grimes had 13 digs, six assists, and an ace, while Cassie Kuerschen added three digs as one of six substitutes for the Nittany Lions, a figure that’s higher than recent matches, when Penn State’s coaching staff would call upon two or three subs at most. Backup setter Ally Van Eekeren recorded an assist and Zoe Weatherington played for the first time since the Louisville loss. Quinn Menger came in to serve.

Podraza, the reigning Big Ten Setter of the Year, will have a chance to reunite with her former Ohio State teammates when the Buckeyes arrive at Rec Hall Saturday. Star pin hitter Emily Londot and Ohio State (6-8, 3-2 Big Ten) beat Rutgers 3-1 Friday in Piscataway, New Jersey, before making the trip to University Park.

Katie Schumacher-Cawley, Maddy Bilinovic, and Anjelina Starck took to the podium following Friday’s win to discuss what worked well for the Nittany Lions and some of the challenges that Steve Aird’s Hoosiers posed, among other topics. The transcript of questions and answers can be found below.

Post-Match Press Conference

Schumacher-Cawley’s opening statement:

“Thanks for coming. It’s great to win at home. Indiana’s a very good team. It’s hard to win. I tell these guys this all the time. It’s hard to win, and we found a way to gut some points out there in the fifth set. We’ll take it.”

You hit nearly .600 in the second set after a kind of slow start. How important was that to bounce back?

KSC: “Yeah, we started off with way too many errors, and then we found ways to score. I thought we were passing better in the second set and our attackers were one-on-one.”

This obviously came down to the very end, but what would you say helped you the most to push through and pull off the win?

Starck: “Probably just focusing on one point at a time. No matter if we won or lost a point, we would come in the middle, talk for a sec, and then just focus on the next play, not dwell on the past.”

That was one of the loudest crowds I’ve heard at Rec Hall. Can you speak to the importance of the energy of the crowd in matches like this where it comes down to the wire?

KSC: “There’s no place like Rec Hall. We’re so lucky to have the fans we have. The band is always amazing. We’re lucky to have the support we do here. It’s nice to give them a good show. A little overtime tonight, but that’s okay.”

Maddy, how did it feel to have two big aces there?

Bilinovic: “That was fun. I’ve been working on serving all week, just doing anything I can to help the team in any position, whatever it takes. Tonight I definitely helped out at the service line.”

How fun is it to play in an atmosphere like this and celebrate with your teammates?

Bilinovic: “Yeah, when we’re going point-for-point with teams like that — Indiana was super scrappy — I think that atmosphere, Rec Hall being as loud as it was, that makes all the difference for us. We build off that, for sure.”

Anjelina, what were some things that Indiana did particularly well tonight to challenge you guys?

Starck: “They have great service pressure on the back line, and I thought we did a good job handling that to give Mac good options to set.”

Did this match play out as you expected it to? If not, how did you adjust throughout the sets?

Bilinovic: “I think every team we’re going to play in the Big Ten we know is going to be a battle. We were talking in the huddles and in the timeouts that we have to stick to our scouting report. When we stray away from that is when we get in trouble, so just staying disciplined and working hard. We expect that from every team.”

Anje, how would you assess Mac’s play lately? What’s it like playing with her?

Starck: “It’s a lot of fun playing with her. She’s been really working on her defense, which has helped us a lot. She gives our hitters one-on-ones, which makes it so much easier to score, so I think she’s been doing a very good job.”