By: Playing at home in Sherman Gymnasium, the Lady Blues rode the home crowd to a 3-2 victory over Rockford College after trailing by two sets.
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Box Score 2 JACKSONVILLE, Ill. – Things looked bleak for the Illinois College volleyball team after the second set of Friday night's closing match with Rockford College. The Lady Blues had been defeated in four sets by Lakeland earlier in the day and were down a pair of sets to the Regents. As it turned out, IC had them right where they wanted them.
The Lady Blues had their offense click into gear at exactly the right time and cranked up their service game along with it, bringing the crowd to life with a come-from-behind, 3-2 victory to go 1-1 on the first day of the Illinois College Tournament and improve to 2-5 on the season.
IC closes out the tournament tomorrow with a 10 a.m. match with Culver-Stockton College and a 2 p.m. meeting with Anderson University.
Lakeland 3, Illinois College 1The opening match of the day for Illinois College was a tight duel through three sets, but the visiting Muskies exploded in the fourth set to earn a 3-1 win. After going down a set, the Lady Blues played a complete set on both ends to claim a 25-20 win in the second. The team had 12 kills and forced eight attacks errors from Lakeland to knot the match at 1-1.
The third set could have gone either way and was tied as late as 17-17 before the Muskies began to pull away. With a 25-21 win, Lakeland needed only one more set to earn the opening win. The drama was minimal in the fourth set, as the visitors scored the first 10 points and led by as many as 13 points at the midway point of the set. A brief four-point run gave the Lady Blues a glimmer of hope, but the deficit was ultimately too large to make up.
Erin Satterlee led IC with eight kills in the match, while
Erin Washington added seven.
Lisa Lowry (21 digs, 15 assists) and
Courtney Louveau (14 assists, 11 digs) each had double-doubles, while
Maurissa Moulton chipped in with 19 digs as well.
Illinois College 3, Rockford 2The match of the day turned out to be the last one to finish as the Lady Blues came out of nowhere to win three straight sets and split their opening day. After being ahead, 24-20, in the first set, Illinois College lost six points in a row to let the chance of an early lead slip away. The bad fortune continued into the second set as Rockford took an early lead and never allowed IC the chance to make it up, going up 2-0 in the match with a 25-17 win.
The match began to turn in the third set as Illinois College began to eliminate the mistakes that were leading to easy Rockford points. Committing only three attack errors in the set, IC led wire-to-wire and took a 25-20 win in the set with Satterlee earning the final kill.
The momentum continued to build in the fourth set as a confident Lady Blues club had 16 kills to only five for the Regents. Satterlee and Lowry had the final two points of the set for a 25-19 win, pushing the match to a winner-take-all fifth.
It was a rough start for IC early on in the final set, with Rockford taking a 7-3 lead. The Lady Blues still trailed, 10-6, when they used their final timeout. Coming out of the break, an attack error from the Regents opened the door just a crack and
Makenna Barker took full advantage. Down 11-8 when Barker went back to serve, the freshman whipped in three straight aces against a flustered Rockford defense to tie the score. An attack error and two more aces followed, giving IC a match point. It came two points later with Lowry delivering the kill off a Barker assist for a 15-12 decision.
Barker ended the match with eight service aces, the eighth-most in a single match in IC program history. She added 10 digs, one of five IC players to hit double-digits in the category. Washington led the offense with 13 kills and a .312 hitting percentage. Lowry had her second double-double of the day with 31 assists and 23 digs. Moulton tied for match-high honors with 29 digs.
