Illinois volleyball (7-1) responded to its first loss of the season by winning in four sets against Western Kentucky. The win moved both head coach Chris Tamas and the program as a whole to 2-0 all-time against Western Kentucky.
Three Illinois players had 10 or more kills against Western Kentucky: junior outside hitter Averie Hernandez, freshman outside hitter Laynie Smith and graduate outside hitter Raina Terry. Terry led the entire team in kills with 19, and Hernandez put up 17. Smith had 10 during the four-set victory and also put up six blocks during the game.
These 19 kills for Terry put her fifth all-time for Illinois in kills (1,766). The current leader is Jocelynn Birks who played from 2011 to 2015 and finished her career with 1,972 kills. This game also marked the second straight double-double for the Ohio native.
To begin the opening frame, Illinois began slowly. It started down 6-1, but eventually battled back. A spark came from Terry and redshirt sophomore middle blocker Cari Bohm to help pull the team within one. Illinois fell back during set one after the media timeout and went down by four with a score of 15-11. Illinois did not quit, however. Redshirt junior setter Brooke Mosher sparked up the court and helped put Illinois on a 5-0 run to pull them to just under one.
Illinois knotted up the score at 24 following Terry’s back-to-back kills after Western Kentucky held two straight set points. After being tied at 25, back-to-back blocks by the Illini pushed them over to win set one.
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“It doesn’t matter what it looks like, all of us coaches are going to want it to look flawless, and all the fans are going to want it to look flawless, but I try to teach the team that everyone’s going to be good,” Tamas said. “They’ve just got to be able to free up and go. I felt like we got a little tentative.”
Set two began with Illinois down from a 5-0 run. The deficit got to 11-6, which led to Tamas calling a timeout to help Illinois regroup. The timeout was not enough, and Illinois still trailed by 10 after another run from Western Kentucky. This caused Illinois to burn its last time out, down 17-7. Illinois crawled back to within six but in the end, Western Kentucky took set two, 25-19.
Illinois went into set three with a 5-1 lead and caused Western Kentucky to burn a timeout. Despite this, Illinois still cruised in this set off of kills from Smith and Terry.
Illinois came out flat during set four and allowed an early 5-0 run by the opponents. However, the team fought back with a 5-0 run themselves to tie up the set at six. Mosher helped rally the team to take a 14-10 lead. Bohm and Smith put together a couple of blocks during a 3-0 run that caused Western Kentucky to call a timeout. The timeout wasn’t enough in the end and Illinois ended up taking the set 25-19 and won the match 3-1.
Illinois will take on Missouri and Lipscomb next in Nashville, Tennessee for the Lippy Invite. These games will be played on Friday, Sept. 20 and Saturday, Sept. 21.
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