Friday, March 29, 2024

Team splits in Big Ten action

September 30, 2002
Senior middle Angela Morleylo prepares to serve the ball during the Spartans —

Iowa City - It wasn’t the result the Spartans hoped for.

However, the MSU volleyball team left the first weekend of Big Ten play with a 1-1 record.

MSU (9-3 overall, 1-1 Big Ten) lost in three games - 23-30, 27-30 and 28-30 - to Minnesota (15-2, 2-0) Friday night, but came back and beat Iowa (6-6, 0-2) in four games - 30-26, 30-25, 19-30 and 30-27- Saturday.

MSU hoped to walk out of Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Saturday night with a 2-0 start in Big Ten competition, but after its loss to the eighth-ranked Golden Gophers the Spartans were going to be satisfied with a split.

“After the loss Friday to Minnesota, we needed to come out of this weekend 1-1,” MSU head coach Chuck Erbe said. “We couldn’t afford another 0-2 start to the Big Ten season like we had last year.”

Friday night, MSU played in The Sports Pavilion where more then 1,900 fans donned in maroon and yellow cheered for the Golden Gophers.

Unfortunately, Minnesota was too strong. The Gophers outplayed the Spartans in game one, but MSU battled hard in games two and three.

In the final game, in a desperate attempt to force a game four, the Spartans came out of intermission on fire. The Spartans were up by as many as eight points at 18-10. The Gophers slowly charged back, but MSU still held a 25-19, until MSU broke down.

“In game three, I thought we played a lot better and with a lot more consistency,” Erbe said. “But at the end, we got tentative and couldn’t finish. That’s disappointing.”

The Spartans’ finish Erbe was talking about was an 11-3 Gopher run to close the game and the match.

“Looking at the stats, we out-served Michigan State. We blocked evenly with them, and out-dug them,” Minnesota head coach Mike Hebert said. “They are always a sound team, and I’ve got a lot of respect for Michigan State.”

The Spartans had to put their loss behind them when they traveled to Iowa on Saturday.

Iowa hasn’t been a Big Ten powerhouse in years and was predicted to finish at the bottom of the conference this season by Big Ten coaches. This said, MSU was expecting an easy contest. It didn’t happen that way.

The Hawkeyes stayed neck- and-neck with the Spartans in games one and two. The Spartans just out-muscled and out-hit the Hawkeyes en route to 30-26 and 30-25 victories.

Erbe called his team “Jekyll and Hyde” in game three. The Spartans hit an abysmal .021 while committing 10 attacking errors. To make matters worse, officiating was questionable as Erbe and the rest of his staff left their seats numerous times to question some controversial calls.

Regardless, a game-four win looked unlikely for the first two-thirds of the game. However, after trailing 21-16, MSU rallied back, silencing all 283 fans in the arena.

“We didn’t come out and play like we know how to play,” senior middle Angela Morley said of the entire Iowa match. “I mean, it was better than against Minnesota, but we still have a lot of stuff to work on.

“Toward the end of the forth game I thought we picked it up. But we have to play like that all three games, and we have to find it within us to play like that every point.

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