In one heartbreaking sweep, the No. 10 Wisconsin volleyball team ended its season the same way it started. The Badgers came up short in the third round of the 2006 NCAA volleyball tournament Friday night against host school No. 8 Texas, losing the match 30-19, 30-22, 30-12 and falling short of the Elite Eight for the first time in three years.
""Texas was one very hot team tonight,"" UW head coach Pete Waite said following the match. ""After a very good start on our part, they just kept coming back and never slowed down at all. I wish we would have competed better, giving them a better match tonight, but sometimes that happens.""
Wisconsin began the match with an impressive 5-0 lead off strong play by senior middle blocker Amy Bladow and senior outside hitter Maria Carlini. The Badgers extended their lead to 8-2 later on in game one, but that would be their biggest lead all night. The Longhorns went on a 12-3 run from there to pull ahead 14-11, and eventually finished off the game by scoring eight straight points. Games two and three saw several early ties, but the Badgers simply could not gain enough momentum to take any substantial lead.
Wisconsin had no luck matching up with the taller Texas front, despite implementing a new rotation in game two to try to stop their effective block. The Longhorns finished with 14 team blocks, nearly twice as many as the 7.5 that the Badgers put up. Wisconsin also had trouble stopping Texas freshman outside hitter Destinee Hooker, who had eight kills on 13 attempts and no errors. As a team, the Longhorns managed an impressive .398 hitting percentage and only 12 errors on 83 attacks.
""They are a very offensive team, so once they're swinging well and feeling good about things, they're really making spray balls and [we had] trouble setting up [our block] on all of the options they have,"" Waite said.
The Badgers put up some remarkable statistics during the game, albeit for all the wrong reasons. As a team, Wisconsin had a season low .000 hitting percentage and was outdug 25 to 44. Freshman outside hitter Brittney Dolgner, who has consistently come up with double-digit kills in the majority of her matches this season, was held to four kills all night and hit .000. Wisconsin's best individual efforts came from its middles, Bladow and junior Taylor Reineke, who combined for 15 kills and 3.5 blocks.
The low numbers were undoubtedly a result of the tremendous defensive play of the Longhorns. Along with its 44 digs, Texas also had 41 assists and six service aces compared to Wisconsin's 27 assists and no aces.
""Another thing they do is they serve tough; they keep you on your heels offensively,"" Waite said. ""That's one thing I wish we would have done better is serve receive. Had we done that it might have kept us in system and it might have been a better match.""
""It's great that they're a tall team, but they're also very physical and they were also very defensive tonight in their blocking and their digging,"" Reineke said. ""They outdug us and outblocked us by a lot. I think they played really well tonight and we didn't perform.""
Now that their season is over, the volleyball team will wrap up this week and say goodbye to their seniors Bladow, Carlini and setter Katie Lorenzen.
—uwbadgers.com contributed to this report.
