Wisconsin Badgers vollleyball team sweeps Northwestern but is left wanting more

MADISON – Last month the Wisconsin volleyball team travelled to Evanston, Illinois, for a match with Northwestern and came home with a straight set win the Badgers captured by winning each set by at least nine points.

The rematch wasn’t nearly as easy even though UW scored a sweep in front of 7,229 Sunday afternoon at the UW Field House.

The Badgers, who are ranked No. 9 by the American Volleyball Coaches Association, posted a 25-13, 25-23, 25-20 victory. UW recorded its fourth .400 hitting match of the season and recorded double-digit blocks for the third straight match.

The Badgers also held Northwestern (3-11, 1-5 Big Ten) to .211 hitting, which on the surface is good but not nearly as good as the first meeting when they held the Wildcats to a 0.67 hitting percentage.

Northwestern hit .324 during the final two sets.

“I’m not so sure we were as strong defensively as we like to pride ourselves on there towards the end,” UW coach Kelly Sheffield said. “But I’m certainly happy to get a 3-0 sweep and moving on to the next.”

Senior Sarah Franklin (14 kills, .355 hitting percentage) led the team in kills. The Badgers had four players take more than 10 swings and all hit better than .350. The others were senior Anna Smrek (13 kills, .500), senior Julia Orzol (10 kills, .526) and senior Devyn Robinson (seven kills, .455).

At the net, senior Caroline Crawford had eight blocks, one off her season high, and the Badgers finished with 12.

The victory was Wisconsin’s fifth straight and raised its record to 11-4 overall and 5-1 in the Big Ten.

Germantown graduate Lily Wagner, a sophomore whose mother, Amy Lee, played for the Badgers from 1994-97, shared Northwestern’s team lead of 10 kllls with Alexa Rousseau.

Graduate student Sophia Summers added seven kills and a .778 hitting percentage for the Wildcats but didn’t get a kill during the final set.

“I think our blockers didn’t do a great job of reading the situation and what our opponent was trying to do,” Sheffield said. “And I’m not sure we were always working hard enough to get good really good swings, terminating swings out of system for the first part of the match.

“I didn’t think our work-rate rate was particularly high, but there my be an element of nitpicking when you sweep a Big Ten opponent and hit north of .400.”

The match turned in the second set when Northwestern couldn’t put away UW after taking a 19-16 lead. Freshman Charlie Fuerbringer had a service run of five straight points to help the Badgers turn a 19-16 deficit into a 22-19 lead. Smrek had two kills during that run and five during the final seven points of the period.

“I just wanted to keep going,” Smrek said. “When we can get on a run and everything is working and in system we’ve just got to get the job done and just go up, give confidence to each other and take big rips.”

That stretch set the tone for the final set, which though close UW never trailed.

Robinson had five kills during that portion of the match when UW put on a clinic of shot making. Franklin, Orzol and Smrek also driled difficult shots that led to kills as the Badgers completed their fifth straight sweep.

Up next: No. 11 Oregon Friday night at the Field House.