The Badgers put together an impressive showing against a top-three team in the country.
When the Wisconsin Badgers started their gauntlet of weekly matches against the top teams in the Big Ten, the one upshot was they controlled their own destiny in the conference race and the push for a top-4 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Last Friday’s match against Nebraska was a golden opportunity for the Badgers to show they belong at the top of the conference next to the Huskers and Penn State.
The Huskers outplayed the Badgers to win their first match in the Field House since 2013. Not only did the Badgers lose the match, but they also faced another gut-check moment, not unlike the second weekend of the season down in Texas.
After the Nebraska loss, senior captain Sarah Franklin had some thoughts that you don’t necessarily want to hear from a senior-laden team with fewer than 10 conference matches left to go in their career.
“We are a veteran team, but that comes with being able to act like that and being able to develop as the season goes on and being able to stay hungry to grow in other aspects, maybe outside of volleyball, maybe on the court, maybe different things that we can do just to get that edge because right now, where we’re at, we don’t have that.”
The Badgers had a week of practice, and probably a little soul-searching, before returning to the Field House with another opportunity to find that edge against #3 Penn State.
It would be hard to argue that the match could have gone any better for a team looking to get that je ne sais quoi heading into the stretch run of the season.
The Badgers jumped out to an early lead in the first set before facing a key moment where they have faltered all too often this season. The Nittany Lions tied the score at 22-22 on a service ace from Jess Mruzik.
It was another clutch set, but this time the Badgers delivered. They scored 3 of the next 3 points to clinch the Set 1 win.
“I feel like we went into the match with nothing to lose,” CC Crawford said about the team’s mentality on Saturday. “And like Sarah said, we played with so much joy that I didn’t ever feel like the match was as close as it was, because I don’t think we’re, none of us are looking at the score.”
One interesting aspect of volleyball is it’s a sport where every player must know their assignments and work in unison and yet it is also a sport dominated by emotion and momentum. Crawford and Franklin hinted that perhaps there were benefits to just going out and playing volleyball.
Said Franklin, “I think we were all kind of dominated by joy in this game and just really finding things that were clicking and just trying to find that over and over and over again. And it was really a blast to be out there. I would say we had a big emphasis on looking towards each other, and I feel like when we do that and everything kind of flows.”
Winning a clutch set was huge for the Badgers, but what came next was pretty wild against the number 3 team in the country.
Libero Lola Schumacher hit the service line with the Badgers up 3-2, and when she finally put a serve in the net, the Badgers held a 15-2 lead. 15-2!
Schumacher and her teammates received a well-deserved standing ovation for their incredible 13-point scoring run.
“Awesome reaction by the crowd,” Coach Kelly Sheffield said in his weekly press conference. “How often do you see a standing ovation when the other team scores? But I think that was an appreciation, clearly, of what we were stringing together, and what do we do after that? We stick the next pass, first ball, side out, and we’ve got the serve again.”
The Badgers won the set 25-12 and then cleaned up the sweep by winning the third set by a comfortable 25-13 margin. The win put the Badgers’ conference record at 12-2 heading into their trip to LA starts Thursday night against USC.
A dominant win usually means some gaudy statistics and that was very much the case against Penn State.
The Badgers hit 0.465 for the match with *checks notes* 3 errors. Not 3 errors per set, 3 errors.
“I think it’s just something that when you’re in the game, you don’t really notice or you don’t really think about that,” Anna Smrek said. “It’s just kind of being able to play free and being able to kind of play for your teammates. So just being able to stack good I think was kind of a focus there.” But I didn’t even know [we had three errors] until he said that.”
Penn State is a good, not great blocking team, averaging 2.5 blocks per set, but to allow them to have exactly zero blocks is equally gaudy. The Badgers countered with 11 scoring stuffs, completing their ascendancy to the number-one blocking team in the nation.
Carter Booth had probably her best match of the season, getting 6 kills on 7 swings, Julia Orzol had 11 kills on 0.526 hitting, and Franklin and Smrek both had 13 kills with hitting percentages north of 0.400. Franklin took 65 swings against Iowa and Penn State and had 0 errors.
Efficient hitting starts with good passing, and the Badgers were able to stay in system at a good clip and then really excel out of system with some plays that are definitely the kinds that happen when it is decidedly your day. Six different players besides setter Charlie Fuerbringer had assists on the afternoon.
If you are looking for a sign that it was meant to be on Saturday, one could make a strong case for Booth’s finger-tip kill in Set 1 being the play. But then in Set 2, there was a setter dump, by the middle blocker.
Franklin got a block tip airborne with a one-arm stab that went straight to Crawford. One of Crawford’s assets is her ability to set, and she completed her setter evolution by delivering a perfect two-handed dump into the middle of the floor.
Schumacher then delivered out-of-system bump sets to Smrek for the next two points to demonstrate that the team’s OOS play was not a fluke.
“What I really enjoyed is for most of the match, when there was a service error, we came right back and stuck the pass and got a lot of first ball kills,” Sheffield said. When we got aced, they got us, we shanked back to back in the first, but from then on it was if we didn’t stick the pass, we were still executing at a really high level out of system and sticking that next pass.”
There is little time for the Badgers to bask in the glow of their dominant top-five win as they head west for matches against USC on Thursday and UCLA on Saturday. USC currently sits at 9-5 in the conference and 10-3 at home.
Difficulties winning when traveling across multiple time zones has been a major theme in the new Big Ten reality so far, so the Badgers will have to become joyful road warriors in the biggest way if they want to demonstrate that the real Badgers are more the Penn State Badgers than the Nebraska Badgers.
“We played awfully well this past week, and I would say minus the Nebraska match, we played pretty well for about a month,” Sheffield said. “So is that an aberration, that match, or is it something that brings you concern? I guess you can write a story on either one of those things. That’s why the critical element is let’s continue to build this thing up.”
When the Badgers return from the sun and surf, they then face a midweek revenge match against Minnesota on Wednesday and a revenge road trip to Devaney to play Nebraska next Saturday.
“We try to remind ourselves, and they remind me as well, lighten up, Francis, it’s a game,” Sheffield said. “I think we do a pretty good job of kind of reminding each other while we’re going out there or trying to punch somebody in the nose, let’s have fun doing it.”
“And if we get punched in the nose, let’s say, let’s get right back at it.”