FORT COLLINS, Colo. – The No. 12 Illinois volleyball team earned a gritty five-set victory (25-16, 25-14, 18-25, 25-27, 11-15) over No. 25 Colorado State on Friday night (August 24) at Moby Arena. The Illini dominated the opening two sets, before the Rams forced a decisive fifth after coming back in the third and fourth periods.
Junior Jacqueline Quade paced the Illini (2-0) with a match-high 22 kills, while sophomore Megan Cooney added 13 kills – including eight coming in the final two sets – while senior Blayke Hranicka chipped in 11 kills.
Senior Jordyn Poulter registered her 24th career double-double and the first of the season with 46 assists and 15 digs, while sophomore Morgan O'Brien led the squad with a match-high 19 digs and junior Caroline Welsh notched 11 digs on the night.
As a team, the Illini outblocked the Rams (0-1), 13 to 11, with junior Ashlyn Fleming leading the way with seven stuffs. Senior Ali Bastianelli added six blocks in the win.
After CSU knotted the score at 2-2, the Illini jumped out to a 7-3 lead with back-to-back Fleming kills. The Rams battled back to within four at 13-9, but a pair of Cooney kills sent the Illini to the victory.
In a back-and-forth start to the opening set, the Illini broke a 14-14 tie on a CSU service error en route to an 11-2 run – highlighted by a pair of aces from sophomore Emmaline Walters and third from freshman Taylor Kuper – to take a 25-16 win in the first.
In similar fashion in the second period, both teams traded points as a CSU kill tied things up at 9-9. The Illini then scored nine unanswered points – eight on the serve of Quade – to grab a 20-11 advantage. After back-to-back CSU kills, the Illini finished off the set on back-to-back blocks followed by a Ram hitting error, closing out a 14-3 run for the 25-14 set victory.
The home team Rams came out of the break strong to build an early 6-2 lead, but back-to-back blocks from Quade, Bastianelli and Hranicka tied the score at 10-10. After back-and-forth action that saw the set enter an 18-18 tie, CSU closed things out with seven-straight points to pull within 2-1 with a 25-18 set win.
In a highly competitive fourth set, the Illini used the strong serve of Kuper to grab an early 10-6 edge, but the Rams came back to tie the score at 12-12. From there, the score was tied five more times until CSU earned its first set point at 24-21. The Illini then fought off five set points, before the Rams finished off their sixth to force a fifth set.
The Illini will wrap up play in Colorado as they travel to Greeley, Colo., to take on Northern Colorado at 8 p.m. CT on Saturday (August 25) in the Bank of Colorado Arena.
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