Sept. 30, 2005

Final Stats

Champaign,Ill. - Northwestern exploded for a 30-18 victory in game one of its match with Illinois Friday night at Huff Hall, and held on for a 30-18, 31-33, 31-29, 26-30, 15-10 victory over the host Illini in front of 1,557 fans. Illinois falls to 10-4 overall, 1-2 in the Big Ten. Northwestern improves to 10-3, 1-2 in the conference. Illinois hosts No. 8 Wisconsin on Saturday night.

"We had trouble tonight in serve receive and it was probably one of toughest games in execution that we've had in a while," said Illinois Head Coach Don Hardin. "Still I was impressed with how our team responded to adversity and hung in there, nearly pulling out the victory."

Rachel VanMeter paced Illinois with 24 kills, doing so on 82 attack attempts, the fourth-most in Illinois history. Kayani Turner had 15 kills, but the Illini hit just .147 as a team.

Northwestern used the serve to its advantage with a whopping 15 aces, four by both Cassie McLaughlin and Courtnie Paulus.

BethVrdsky paced four Illinois players in double figure digs with 19 followed by Lizzie Bazzetta (17), Stephanie Obermeier (15), and Rasa Virsilaite (11)

Northwestern dominated the first game, hitting .300 to Illinois .171. The Wildcats went on a 10-2 run to take a commanding 23-12 lead.

The Wildcats jumped to a 9-7 advantage in the second game, but this time Illinois responded behind the arm of VanMeter and the blocking of Meghan Macdonald (one block, six block assists) and Vicki Brown (5 block assists) to keep it close. The game was tied at 17, 19, and 22, 23, and 27 before Illinois gutted out a 33-31 victory. Turner had two key kills in pulling out the game.

Game three was equally as close with NU coming out on top 31-29. The Illini took their final lead at 26-25 before Northwestern out-scored Illinois 5-4 in the final stages of the game.

The fourth game was seemingly in the hands of Northwestern as the Wildcats jumped to an 8-1 advantage. The lead was 16-10 before Illinois started to whittle it away. Two kills from Turner sandwiched a cross-court winter from Brown to cut the gap to 19-17, Macdonald brought the comeback full circle with back-to-back aces to tie the score at 19. The Illini never trailed after that in the game as Turner capped off the game and sent it into a fifth and deciding frame. The Illini held Northwestern to a -.057 hitting percentage in game four.

The comeback was not to be for Illinois. Northwestern never trailed in the game, hitting .429 on just one attack error in winning 15-10.

Northwestern hit just .193 for the match with Lindsay Anderson pacing the Wildcats with 19 kills.