After opening the Mid-American Conference (MAC) season with back-to-back losses at home to Bowling Green (10-6, 5-0 MAC), Ball State traveled up to Mount Pleasant, Michigan, for two road tilts with Central Michigan (13-4, 4-1 MAC).
Game One
Seven days after finding itself in a fifth set, win-or-go-home scenario against Bowling Green, Ball State was back there again Friday night against Central Michigan but came alive in the final frame to close it out.
The Cardinals boasted a .450 hitting percentage in the fifth set to secure the win and give Central Michigan its first MAC loss of the season (25-23, 17-25, 25-22, 18-25, 16-14).
“Certainly, that one was a confidence booster for us,” head coach Kelli Miller Phillips said. “We had been focusing on several different things this past week in practice. So being able to have toughness when Central Michigan is very scrappy [and] makes you have to earn points. To be able to fight them off and win one on the road in a tough environment, I thought that was huge for us.”
Redshirt sophomore Aniya Kennedy smashed 17 kills, with a .175 hitting percentage to compliment standout freshman Carson Tyler, who registered 23 kills on the night with a .327 clip. It was two kills shy of the outside hitter’s career-best.
One of Kennedy’s kills gave the Cardinals the 15-14 advantage in set five before she combined with sophomore middle hitter Gwen Crull for the match-winning block.
Crull ended the night with a team-high six total blocks, while graduate middle hitter Aayinde Smith had five. As a team, Ball State out-blocked the Chippewas 14-10.
“We work a lot in practice on just being disciplined with our blocks, and I think that really translates to our games,” Crull said. “We just feel really confident in that, so that’s a good improvement from us lately.”
Senior setter Megan Wielonski turned in a fine performance with 34 kills despite only seeing four of the five sets. Sophomore setter Lindsey Green would play most of the third and all of the fourth set and notched a career-high 19 assists.
“We just couldn’t get any offensive rhythm going, so I thought she did a nice job coming in and bringing a different energy [and] a different offensive mindset, to what we were doing,” Phillips said.
Game Two
The return matchup on Saturday afternoon saw three changes in the starting lineup from Phillips, with sophomore middle hitter Camryn Wise, who went down in the first set of Friday’s game and would not return, being the most noticeable absence.
“Still in the early stages, but an ankle,” Phillips said. “Hopefully we can get back and get feeling better. It’s definitely improved from yesterday to today, but she went down pretty good.”
As if the previous night’s thriller didn’t prove it, the sides went to five sets again, with Central Michigan coming out on top the second time around (25-19, 21-25, 21-25, 25-23, 9-15).
“[It was] the same thing that has been our issue for the last several matches: serve and passes,” Phillips said. “We continued to have too many service errors and that’s just really let teams off the hook time and time again.”
Ball State committed six service errors in the loss, with three in game one.
“That’s something we’re focusing on [and] putting time into in the gym, but we’ve got to continue to do that a lot better pretty quick,” Phillips said.
Back in the starting lineup for the second game, Aniya Kennedy led all Cardinals with 20 kills. Behind Kennedy was Tyler and junior opposite hitter Madison Buckley with 12 kills each.
Wielonski again led the way dishing the rock with 46 assists, tied for her fourth-best this season, while also putting up a solid defensive effort with 15 digs.
Despite the loss, the Cardinals were dominant at the net, out-blocking Central Michigan 18-10 led by a career-high 10 total blocks from Crull. She had 16 total blocks in the series.
“To give you the strengths of her game, blocking is certainly one of them,” Phillips said. “That made a big difference in just getting some hands in faces for Central. Their attackers are physical, they go after it. To be able to slow them down a little bit at the net, that’s a good number for Gwen and that’s something she’s going to have to continue to do well for us every day.”
Two of Ball State’s three toughest series of the MAC season in its first two weekends of league play and the Cardinals sit 1-3 and eighth in conference standings. They will face Miami, Akron and Buffalo in its next three conference matchups.
Only Miami (0-4 in MAC play) has a worse conference record than the Cardinals after four games. Akron and Buffalo sit joint-fourth in conference standings with 3-1 records.
“We’re going to, as a staff, sit down and reevaluate,” Phillips said. “We’re trying to figure out what are going to be some of the magic pieces that we haven’t quite figured out to look how we want to look and have the execution that we need to be a top team in the MAC.”
The second phase is absolutely our serve-and-pass game and the improvement of that. Regardless of if it's next weekend or the MAC tournament, that is certainly an area that must improve for us to get where we want to go.”
Ball State will face Miami on the road next on Tuesday with first serve scheduled for 6:30 p.m.
Contact Daniel Kehn via email at daniel.kehn@bsu.edu or on Twitter @Daniel_Kehn.
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