Disappointing was an understatement for head coach Chuck Erbe after the MSU volleyball team (6-6 overall, 1-3 Big Ten) fell to Purdue on Saturday.
Heartbreaking was more like it as MSU lost, 3-2.
"The single most disappointing thing about this is, we should've won this match," Erbe said. "We lost it on errors."
It was the third game of Saturday's match that set the scene for the Spartans to turn around a shaky start to the Big Ten season.
The team was 0-2 in the Big Ten entering this weekend's matches and had struggled during the season with chemistry and confidence, especially after receiving news last week that junior middle Megan Wallin is out for the season with a knee injury.
MSU defeated Indiana 3-0 on Friday and was on its way to regaining that confidence on Saturday, senior outside hitter Kim Schram said.
This was the Spartans chance to prove themselves.
Saturday brought a battle between Purdue and MSU, as the Spartans led much of the first game only to be overtaken by the Boilermakers, 26-30, after committing a series of errors.
The second game almost mirrored the first as the Spartans maintained a thin lead before pulling ahead and winning, 30-26.
After being down or tied the entire third game, the Spartans came close to gaining the upper hand by bringing the match score to 2-1 in their favor.
The crowd erupted in cheers as a kill by Schram brought the team to game point for the Spartans victory.
Just one more win to go.
But that was when everything went wrong, freshman setter Maggie Griffin said.
"I was feeling great after the third game - I thought we were going to take it in four," Griffin said.
But in the fourth game, the Spartans "collapsed," Erbe said, where they had a deficit of as much as 13 points and struggled with errors.
The fifth game only brought more errors totaling nine hitting errors, two serving errors and four receiving errors in the final two games.
Purdue won both convincingly and took its first match victory against the Spartans in East Lansing during Erbe's tenure at MSU.
The Spartans should've won Saturday's match and had "moments of great play," but in the end, simply lost their composure, Schram said.
"Our play this weekend washes away any doubt or any excuses we have about whether or not we can still play with the lineup we have out there," Schram said. "We can compete with anyone and we didn't."
This is a consistent problem for the team, Griffin said.
"We come out slow every time we play and then we have to make a comeback," Griffin said.
"There is nothing you can practice to make that go away, it's just something that you have to figure out."
The loss of Wallin greatly hurt the team, Erbe said, but the biggest problem out on the court is the Spartans' mental game.
"You can't run a drill that teaches people to stop getting behind at the beginning of the game and then having to recapture the momentum," Erbe said. "That's from the neck-up."
The team will travel to Ann Arbor to fight the Wolverines at 7 p.m. Wednesday and will head to No. 19 Illinois for an match at 8 p.m. Saturday.
Erbe said earlier in the season that MSU would have to get used to being the underdogs during the season, but on Saturday the Spartans were the better team, Erbe said.
"We are going to have to fight really hard for wins and this is one that got away."
