After starting this season 8-0 overall and 2-0 in conference play, Ball State sat atop the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association’s leaderboard and awaited a national ranking. Now after dropping its second match in a row, this time to rival IPFW, Ball State looks anything but a conference contender or a ranked team.
When Ball State dropped its first match on Sunday to Grand Canyon coach Joel Walton stressed that the Cardinals needed to reassess themselves and try to inject some sort of vigor into their play.
Instead of finding answers and regaining confidence against I-69 rival IPFW, Ball State again faltered and played off-balance.
“Tonight was scary,” Walton said. “In a match where we needed to see our team rebound and play better, we didn’t. We played tentative again.”
In a match IPFW treated like the Super Bowl, Ball State could not match the energy level of the Mastodons, which led to the feeling of “one step forward and two steps back” all night.
The first set saw Ball State come out firing, showcasing exactly what Walton had implored his team to play like. The Cardinals only trailed once, and production coming from everyone, not just one or two players.
Ball State out-hit, out-blocked, out-served and kept IPFW on its heels and out of system all set. But after the step forward, the Cardinals could not sustain their play and subsequently got into trouble.
After a season-long search for production on the left side, the Cardinals finally were getting not only kills, but also a decent attack percentage from sophomores Shane Witmer and Matt Sutherland. But as soon as the team saw production up on the left, the consistent right side dropped off.
Senior outside hitter Greg Herceg was coming off of winning MIVA Offensive Player of the Week for his performances this past weekend, but was shut down completely by IPFW and had more attacking errors than kills.
“I had trouble getting in a rhythm, I just wasn’t comfortable swinging,” Herceg said. “I didn’t know where the block was and I was just getting unlucky.”
Even when Herceg has struggled this year, senior Jamion Hartly has been able to come in and sustain the high level of play on the right side — he hit -.286.
Sutherland was the only Cardinal that seemed to be able to find any success. The sophomore capitalized on his second start of the season and notched his first career double-double with career-highs 11 kills and 10 digs. But in the loss, those numbers don’t get the attention they deserve.
Not being able to get everyone clicking at once has plagued the Cardinals all year, and now that their competition has stiffened it is starting to show-up in the win-loss column, not just on the stat sheet.
“We’ve lacked all season long a great team performance,” Walton said. “It would be really nice to see everything click.”
After the Mastodons started smelling blood in the water, they started gaining more confidence and slamming the door on every attempt for a Ball State comeback.
Down in the third set, the Cardinals strung a couple side-out points together and brought the deficit to 16-21. The next point saw a long rally that had senior libero Tommy Rouse dive into press row and knock equipment everywhere. After Rouse’s save the seniors Matt Leske and Dan Wichmann stuffed IPFW’s return, bringing forth an eruption for the Cardinals.
But as the night went for the Cardinals, the Mastodons cooling won the serve back, and proceeded to rattle off three straight and take the set.
Being able to overcome adversity is going to be crucial for Ball State, as they enter the toughest part of their schedule. The Cardinals travel to conference foes No. 6 Ohio State, No. 14 Lewis and Loyola-Chicago in the upcoming two weeks.
Realistically that road trip could see the Cardinals fall to 3-5 in the MIVA, and put them in dire need for a string of wins for a decent seed in the conference tournament.
“We need to get the guys as much confidence as we can, and get them to realize their backs are up against the wall,” Walton said.
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