BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – The Northern Illinois volleyball team picked up its fifth win of the season after sweeping Tennessee State 3-0 on Saturday morning in the Huskies' (5-6) final match at the Lady Topper Volleyball Invitational at Western Kentucky University, giving NIU a third-place finish.
"We have been going through a tough stretch lately where we have been trying to put together a solid match so it's nice to get a win," said NIU coach Ray Gooden "We were able to pull out the first set and take the second set to go up 2-0 in the match. We started the third set slowly, but rallied back to get the win."
Even though the Huskies out-hit TSU .220 to .071, the story of the match was the NIU defense that totaled 54 digs and tied a season-high with 10 blocks, compared to TSU's 39 digs and two blocks. Cassie Yates led NIU with three blocks, while Meghan Romo had 2.5 and Kaitlyn Pascus had two. In the back row of the defense, Maddie Hughes led NIU with 20 digs.
"In order to win this type of match, we needed to win the hustle plays," Gooden said. "We did a lot with our blocking and back row on defense that really helped us."
On the offensive side, Allison McGlaughlin led the Huskies in kills for the third match in a row with 13 and narrowly missed her fourth double-double of the season with nine digs. Romo also reached double-figures with 10 kills. Amanda Tadla led the offense with 18 assists, while Kristin Hoffman also had 10 helpers.
Down 21-19 in the first set, the Huskies tied the score at 21-21 after a kill by McGlaughlin and an attack error by Terakka Walker, forcing TSU to take a timeout. The Lady Tigers stumbled out of the break with back-to-back hitting errors by Santia Sanders and Shaquita Williams to give NIU a 23-21 advantage. The teams then exchanged points before a McGlaughlin serve error and a kill by Vicmari Prospero knotted the score again, 24-24. In the next sequence, Romo put down a kill to give NIU set point, but Prospero matched with a kill of her own. Romo then notched another kill to give NIU its second set point and the Huskies took advantage to win the set 27-25 after a kill from Meagan Schoenrock.
"I thought Romo did a good job for us, scoring some pretty big points in that first set," Gooden said.
