Sports
Ohio Volleyball falls to Ball State in four sets
By: Audrey Paquette
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Ohio Volleyball split its series with Ball State in four sets on Saturday night.
Despite breaking the Cardinals 13-game-winning streak Friday night they couldn’t repeat their performance. After four sets, the Bobcats put an end to their streak and gained some confidence. The Cardinals came out looking for some revenge on Ohio’s senior day.
In the first set, the Cardinals scored 10 unanswered points before the Bobcats were able to fight back. Ball State kept hitting kill after kill and the Bobcats could not return anything back.
The Bobcats kept fighting and kept it close, but the Cardinals pulled out the win in the first set 25-21.
The Cardinals lost their momentum in the second set because they kept making attack errors, ball handling errors and had bad sets. The Bobcats pulled out a win in that set 25-14.
However, the next two sets did not go the Bobcat’s way.
The Cardinals capitalized on the Bobcat’s weakness’ and were able to score six aces for the night.
Head coach Geoff Carlston believes at some points they could not set up their middles because of how tough the Cardinals were serving it. The Bobcats usually run their offense through the middles, but the Cardinals found a way to stop the offense from scoring.
“I just think our offense was a little bit sluggish today, too predictable,” Carlston said. “We have to be consistent. I’m not sure if it was senior night or whatever the case was, but we did not play with the same zip tonight.”
Despite the lack of zip tonight from Ohio, the Cardinals kept finding more and more momentum throughout the night.
“A lot of times we would be up in points and then they would get 6 or 7 points in a row,” Caitlin O’Farrell said. “And then they would be on top of us, and we wouldn’t be able to get it back as much.”
Ball State had more kills in sets three and four compared to the Bobcats and were able to get 52 kills in total for the match.
Even though the Bobcats lost, Carlston shared that the team will be competing in the MAC, but says it will need to be more consistent when they play in the MAC.
“Consistency is something we will need from here on out and we have another tough match on Wednesday,” Carlston said.
Ohio has one more last home game on Nov. 16 against Kent State before the MAC tournament.