With one final shot and two tough home matches to round out the season, the Wisconsin volleyball team (7-13 Big Ten, 17-15 overall) suffered losses at the hands of No. 15 Illinois (15-5, 24-7) by scores of 25-18, 25-16, 25-23 and No. 18 Purdue (13-7, 24-8) in a 25-21, 25-22, 21-25, 19-25, 15-13 dogfight.
Losing nine out of their previous 12 matches, the Badgers' needed both wins against the ranked opponents this weekend to have any hopes of making the 2008 NCAA tournament. However, ending the weekend empty handed left Wisconsin out of the picture for this year's postseason tournament, and officially ended their season Sunday night.
The first match of the weekend against Illinois was not much of a contest besides the early lead the Badgers took in the first set. Up 13-10 to start the night, the Badgers allowed sophomore outside hitter Laura DeBruler to bring the Illini back into the game. DeBruler had 10 kills and hit .529 for the game and spearheaded a sizable 21-15 Illinois lead en route to a first round win.
I thought actually in the first game we were up 15-13, so we actually did come out of the gates,"" UW head coach Pete Waite said. ""At that point, I think we came out of a timeout and we served it out of bounds. Then we made a couple passing errors and then the momentum swung to their side. And once it swung, they had the confidence and they kept going at us.""
From then on, it was all Illinois as the visitors racked up a 10-2 start and only allowed 16 points in the second game and capitalized on a number of Wisconsin errors to take the third game despite a tie at 15 points and seven more ties down the stretch. DeBruler led all players with 16 kills on the night while the Illini dominated defensively on the net with nine team blocks. Junior outside hitter Caity DuPont led the Badgers with 11 kills in the match, including six in the second set.
Saturday night proved to be a closer match, despite dropping the first two games against the Boilermakers. The Badgers rallied to snare victories in the third and fourth games to force a fifth, where Purdue jumped out to a 10-6 lead. Wisconsin scored four straight points to tie the score at 10 before the Boilermakers gained momentum and scored three of their own to come within two points of the win.
The Badgers again came back, tying the score at 13, before a service error and a kill by Purdue senior middle hitter Stephanie Lynch ended the game. Lynch and senior outside hitter Danita Merlau led all players with 19 and 17 kills respectively, though junior outside hitter Brittney Dolgner amassed 16 for Wisconsin. The Badgers also had a better game defensively, tallying 15 blocks and 54 digs, but the Boilermakers bested them in both categories, putting up 16 blocks and 62 digs of their own.
""I think we really needed one of these two wins, especially this one tonight,"" Waite said after the match against Purdue. ""This is the one we felt we could get and we were right there'¦Unfortunately just a couple of errors at the end of the match made the difference and that was it. That's kind of been the story of the season, get to the brink and then a couple errors.""
- uwbadgers.com contributed to this report.
