While Erin Virtue learned to warm up to coaching and Jen Hynds limped on the sideline, their replacements carried the Illini. The women’s volleyball team went 1-1 in its opening Big Ten weekend.

Stephanie Obermeier and Megan Griffin stepped into the starting lineup and evolved over the weekend. The weekend started roughly on Friday against Purdue; the Illini block was non-existent and the team couldn’t find a rhythm with its hitters. Eventually the Illini turned around their play, but they still lost in four games.

“It seemed like every ten minutes things noticeably started to smooth out,” Illinois head coach Don Hardin said.

Purdue started off the night hitting the ball well. The question was how much of that was the Boilers’ execution and how much could be attributed to the Illini’s lack thereof. In the first two games, Purdue had hitting percentages of .486 and .421, respectively. In the final two games, the Illini started to make defensive adjustments and a few questions about the game were answered. In the first two games, the Illini could not find their rhythm and hurt themselves. After Illinois came together, Purdue’s hitting percentage dropped to .079 and .091 over the next two games.

“Every season you have bad weekends,” Hardin said. “With the adversity, we have to call it one of those. But we still almost fought back to gain composure and pull it out.”

After the first Big Ten match, it was visible that the Illini were already adapting to the new lineup.

“Tonight we found a lot of good things to work on,” senior libero Lauren Harks said. “Every day is a learning experience.”

Hardin made sure to fix the lack of attacking from the middle before going into Saturday’s match-up with Indiana. He noticed that teams had a tendency to gang up on outside hitter Rachel VanMeter, an athlete that Illinois would need productivity out of to get through a tough transition period.

When the Hoosiers first entered Huff Hall, they looked like the perfect team to come around against – more than half of the returning players said in Indiana’s media guide that Illinois was their least favorite place to play.

Illinois carried over the improved defensive play from the last two games against Purdue, and even with its best blocker, Jen Hynds, on the bench, Illinois was able to look to redshirt sophomore Megan Griffin to step up in her place. Illinois beat Indiana in three straight games. Griffin provided the Illinois block with just enough resistance to allow the defense to continue the stellar play.

“I felt prepared,” Griffin said. “I have put in my time at practice and steadily my game has been improving and my block has been coming around.”

Along with a strong block, the middles received more attention in creating offense, giving the Illini 21 out of 52 kills on the night. Megan Macdonald and Griffin had 11 and 10, respectively.

Hardin enjoyed the win, but he enjoyed watching his young setters willingness to go to the middle and the efficiency with which Obermeier ran the offense, even more.

“I am impressed at her willingness to go back to something that didn’t work from the day before,” he said. “Without any practice to turn it around is pretty gutsy. I think tonight was a big improvement from last night. Steph (Obermeier) has the kind of where-with-all to do something like that, and that’s the mark of a great young player.”