Nov. 16, 2000

Box Score

Evanston, IL - Things started off on a positive note for the Illinois volleyball team, on its final road trip of the 200 season Thursday night at Northwestern. Illinois pulled out a 16-14 victory in game one and broke out to a wide lead in game two. In fact, the Illini would enjoy big leads in games two, three, and four. But the difference in those final three games as opposed to game one was Illinois' inability to stop the Wildcat comeback, as Northwestern came from behind to win the final three games and ultimately the match. Illinois fell 16-14, 12-15, 14-16, 11-15 putting in jeopardy its hopes of finishing the season with a winning record, with the Orange and Blue now standing 13-15 overall, and 4-13 in the Big Ten. Northwestern, meanwhile, garnered its second conference victory (now 2-15) and improves to 5-22 on the year.

"This was a really important match for us in terms of meeting our goal of a winning season," Head Coach Don Hardin said. "Now we're going to have to make up for this loss somewhere in our final three matches."

Illinois was led a three-headed attack of middle blockers Betsy Spicer and Lydia Gard and outside hitter Shadia Haddad. Haddad had one of her stronger matches of late, tallying a match-high 22 kills and hitting .240. Haddad made it a double-double with 12 digs. Spicer was her usual consistent self, hitting over .400 again (.429), registering 16 kills in 28 attempts (four errors). Spicer also tallied a double-double with a match-high 16 digs. Gard continued her late season surge with 16 kills of her own and hit an impressive .560 (two errors in 25 swings), while also accounting for seven blocks.

With the exception of those three players, Illinois was unable to get consistent offense flowing from its other positions. The Illini were outhit .256-.196 by NU and were outblocked 18-12. Setter Betsy Eiserman enjoyed another productive night, recording 68 assists.

Illinois now travels to Madison for its final road match of the season, against the Big Ten co-leaders and 6th ranked Wisconsin on Friday at 7 p.m.