Volleyball snaps loss streak
After its longest losing streak since 2003, the team defeated Texas A&M on Saturday.
Published Sept. 19, 2006
Down two games to one, with its back to the wall and facing the prospect of a crippling loss, the 17th-ranked Missouri volleyball team got off the canvas and fought back. Two games later, the Tigers' losing streak was snapped.
MU (7-4, 1-1 in the Big 12) rallied in the fourth and fifth games to pull out a win at home against the Texas A&M Aggies, 30-24, 22-30, 20-30, 30-20, 15-11. The Tigers won despite hitting just .187 for the match — thanks largely to a second game in which the team hit -.040 and a third game in which they hit .122, a game that MU coach Wayne Kreklow called horrible.
Kreklow called his team inconsistent and lamented the swings in momentum during the match, especially in the two games it lost.
"Everything would come together for us on one play, and then we'd hit the ball out of bounds or find some other way to screw up," he said.
After the third game, Kreklow said he worried about his team's psyche, a concern of his all season. But MU got leads of 4-2 and 10-5 in the fourth game and cruised to a 30-20 game win.
"I was worried that after the third game we were desperate emotionally," he said. "But we had a hot start to the fourth game, and that sort of set the tone and righted the ship."
He also attributed some of the win to luck.
"I crossed my fingers and was saying a lot of prayers those last two games." He added that the volleyball gods "looked down on us tonight."
In the fifth game, the Tigers started ahead 5-2, then pulled ahead 8-4 and were never in danger of losing the final game. Senior middle blocker Nicole Wilson delivered a kill to end the game.
Senior outside hitter Jessica Vander Kooi had 17 kills, as did junior outside hitter Na Yang. Freshman outside hitter Julianna Klein had 15 and Wilson contributed 12.
Vander Kooi attributed the turnaround between the third and fourth games to the team taking the coaching staff's words to heart.
"I think we just listened to what they were saying," she said. "The coaches were saying that we had been playing like individuals. But then in those last two games we went out and played like a team."
The win snapped a three-game losing skid, the longest since 2003, and Vander Kooi said it felt great to get back to winning.
"Tonight was a great opportunity to change our losing ways, and it feels like such a relief to turn things around," she said.
Aggie coach Laurie Corbelli was just as unhappy with her team's performance as Kreklow was with MU's.
"I felt like we kind of lollygagged through the first game," she said. "We didn't put up a strong fight and didn't have a strong sense of urgency. I think we lost the match from a mental standpoint in that game."