Know what you call a group of Panthers? A claw.
Know what we call our group of calls of the game for Panther Volleyball? Claw Calls of course.
Hear game highlights with Chris Kleinhans-Schulz and postgame thoughts from assistant coach Jason Allen.
The Panthers opened their MVC conference road schedule with a comeback from down 2-0 at Valpo and a 3-0 sweep against UIC. Is back home for more conference action this week hosting Belmont at 6 p.m. on Friday and Murray State at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
This is the Panther Point of View, your source for all things Panthers. Listen on:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
And MORE!
Follow UNI Athletics on
X
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
Follow the Voice of Panther Volleyball and WBB Chris Kleinhans-Schulz:
X
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Traveling to see your fav sports team is cool. But traveling with AMEX Platinum for the big game is even better. Right this way. With access to dedicated card member entrances at select events, you can skip the line. There's one. And with access to the Centurion launch, it shoots a three. You can catch the next game on the way home. [Crowd cheers] That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms apply. Learn more at americanexpress.com/with AMEX. Card member entrance access, not limited to AMEX Platinum card. Here come the Panthers. Rewards to the kill. Adjust for the second time in her career. Casey rewards with double digit terminations. 24 to 14. Set point UNI and a must win third. That ties the career high that was set against UIC last year. [Crowd cheers] Sydney Golden the serve. Back in along with Cher Nagel. Cher Nagel and rewards, block back, Swiss deck. And now on the right side, it's helming blocked. Rewards and Hartman. Casey rewards and moves into seventh valley history in career blocks first within the 25 point rally scoring era. And most importantly, after trailing two to nothing in the match, we have a contest now as the Panthers have pulled within two to one with a 25 to 14 third set victory. Tied at 14. Callie a club and Reese Booth sub back in for UNI with Golden and Cher Nagel out. Booth looking for a good serve. Deep to Swiss deck. Passes to Coiss. Left side, Brummett. Power tip. Great diving dig, Makota. What instinct? Left side, foulred attacks. It's handled by Hickey. Set over on two. Panthers keeping alive, selling her to powers. The club for the go ahead kill. And the UNI fan section down to our left comes the life on that one. It was a vintage UNI play all around right there. 15 to 14 Panthers. [CHEERING] How about the dig from Makota, along the way? She's at eight for the match. She hasn't been in double figures all year, but she's close. Backside, Warren. Through the block, club leads. It cleared a booth who digs. Power sets club. Tip. Push back over by Hickey, trying for another kill. But Makota, another great play. Club on two with the kill. Back to back for a club. More great defense from Makota in the back row. Time out, Valpo, and a critical juncture. The Panthers scored three in a row to take a 16 to 14 lead. Here at Valpo in a must win fourth set. UNI 14, Valpo 11, fifth set. The serve from Swiss deck, taken by foulred. Golden, back set for Cernago. Done by Swiss deck, heading near the net. Coise sets left. Drummond is blocked, still alive. Valpo kept it up in the front row, pushed over by Swiss deck on three. Golden with first contact. Powers to Cernago, who ends it. And the reverse sweep is complete. UNI dodges the upset at Valpo. And in the first conference, road match of the season, UNI moves a 3-0 in the Missouri Valley, taking the fifth, 15 to 11. The UNI Panthers, after trailing two sets to nothing, rallies to defeat Valpo in Valpo during homecoming week for the beacons. And we're now joined by Panther Assistant Coach Jason Allen following this victory. I mean, UNI had his chances the first two frames and ended up falling behind. What did you like about the way UNI responded, in particular, with coming through in close fourth and fifth sets to finish this one here against the beacons this evening? Yeah, it really disappointed in this second. We had a pretty significant lead and just kind of got served off the court. And first set, we couldn't find the court. Everything we were hitting was long and out, and just really imploded in ourself more. We couldn't stop them, and we couldn't find a kill. But Valpo played great and didn't do a whole lot wrong for the first couple of sets there. And we weathered the storm. I thought Cass did a great job of playing her way out of a pretty poor match to start. Same with Liv. Both of them were hitting negative for most of the match and got decent numbers coming out. So both of them played great. And then Callia was just a spark plug for sure. She came in. She did her job. And she did her role to the best of her ability. And she lit a fire. And she was scoring. And she was a significant part of us getting back in that for sure. I mean, there was that stretch in the middle of the fourth. Livia Chernago gets the kill to tie things at 14. Back to back, Callia Club kills to put you in front. Valpo later ties it up a couple of times, even takes the lead before Kira Fowler comes through at the end to win the set. But with those back-to-back kills from Club, both of those rallies also featured great diving digs by Grace Makoda, including one where Emma Hickey LaBero was trying for a second kill in the match. I mean, we can look up and down this line up and talk about so many significant individual performances. But among other things that stood out, just the way Makoda just diving after every loose ball that she could get to. And a lot of times succeeding. Like, if she doesn't make those kind of plays, like it goes down in the statute as a kill for Club. You're not going to see it listed with a dig by Grace Makoda. But those are the kind of plays that don't show up immediately on the play-by-play that make a huge difference. And you needed a lot of them to win tonight. Yeah, for sure, she played great. She served well. That's kind of why she's in that role. She has got a better serve than Cass right now. And she can play defense like that. She's not afraid to sacrifice her body. So for sure, she played great. She made some really great plays. And proud of us. I wish we weren't in that situation, of course. But on the road, great crowd here, football team here for that first set. Proud of just sticking out. We could have folded pretty easily. And we still played with some confidence and let people that came off the bench and let them play a huge role for us. So proud of that. And now you turn around and play UIC. And I talked pregame about at least over the last couple of years since we've seen Valpo and UIC regularly together. There are some similarities between how Karen Avery's team and Justin Ingram's team go. And one of the things that we see out of UIC in the past is sometimes like Valpo, they end up going with different lineups. And it kind of changes things around. And it's tough to adjust to. I know Bobby talked before this match about you only want to give so much information and not overload the team. Is it kind of a similar situation getting ready for UIC? I'm sure there's some things that you can anticipate from the start with them. But you've got to almost be ready for anything with the flames as well. Yeah, the difference is UIC's offense, you know what you're going to get. They're going to run pretty much the same play in every single rotation for six rotations. They're going to run 6'2. It's going to be fast everywhere. The difference from Valpo is they run all kinds of stuff. And so they just a lot of movement going on. UIC doesn't do that. They just-- they make you beat them with what they do. And so it's just going to be really fast. You're going to see the same things. The difference is they can-- he's got four right sides that he can play at any given time. He's got a couple different outsides. He can play at any given time. He's got three different middles. He can play at any given time. So you don't know what lineup you're going to see. The good thing is you know this is what we're going to see in each rotation. And you've got to try to stop it. So if you can forgive a baseball analogy-- sorry about the Astros-- but Valpo's kind of like that junk ball pitcher. And you just get a bunch of them, whereas UIC is just same two pitches, you know, kind of like the same kind of close or over and over again. You just got to be ready for what's like a 100 hour fastball pitcher, a 100 and 2 mile an hour fastball pitcher. This is what you're going to get. Can you hit it? Can you get up to it? We'll see. So we got our work cut out. They're drastically different in tempos and style. Valpo plays incredibly hard and just stays aggressive. And UIC is going to-- they're going to bring it for sure. They play fast, and they've got some physical kids. So we're going to have to not spot them. Two sets would be great. The set will continue, it's for a little bit, but the Panthers still have 10 set points in hand. The multiple subs for UIC. Ayat Amin returns up front. Francesca Venterini back in the back row. She'll be serving. Team leader in ACES, with 23, had seven of them last Saturday at Evansville. Best ever in the 25-point rally scoring here in Flames history. Panthers handle this one cleanly. Hartman off the block with the kill from the middle. And Cassidy Hartman finishes a perfect first frame, 7-4-7, as the Panthers jump out to a 1-0 lead in the match. It's UNI, 25, UIC, 14. Panthers defeat the Flames in the opening set. Dittsworth will now sub out. Replacing her on serve will be Beatrice Carulia of Roma Italia, daughter of Consuelo Taretta, who competed in women's beach volleyball in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Fortunately lost, both of her matches. Rewards attack, she gets it in from the middle. The assist to Booth, and the Panthers up 15 to 5. Multiple subs of the Panthers, Dijkstra and Booth come out. Sydney Golden and Olivia Chernogel in. And then Dittsworth subs back in to then be replaced by the libero Howard after the serving specialist is one and done. The Panthers now a perfect six of six, siding out in this set. Ruined in 19 of 20 for the match. 95% siding out for the contest is incredible. Block on the far side. Casey Reberts and Olivia Chernogel. That's 600 blocks for Casey Reberts in her career. And the UNI Panthers now up 16 to 5 in the second. And Casey Reberts joins Daniel Brosda, Molly O'Brien, Mindy Struckoff, Jessica Houtes, and Stacey Schmidt in the Valley 600 block club. The UNI Panthers shifting to serve receive. Still match point now at 24 to 16 in the third. UIC with the serve. It goes over from Venterini to Hartman. Now Hartman on the attack, and she gets it in off the block. Panthers win 25 to 16. And UNI sweeps the match three to nothing in the Chicago. Panthers improve now to 4 and 0 in the Missouri Valley conference through the first two weeks of the league schedule. It was not an auspicious start to the road trip when UNI started off down two to nothing in Valparaiso. But these last six sets since UNI has been playing some incredible volleyball. And that continued through tonight with an impressive sweep of the UIC flames who are a credit union one arena. We're now joined by Panther assistant coach Jason Allen. UNI hits 405 for the match. It's 12 blocks in three sets, out serves UIC, 7 to 1. Out digs 32 to 20. We can keep going on with the numbers. But from a coaching side, among the many things that you probably would have been impressed with, what is the biggest thing that you witnessed out of this UNI squad tonight and maybe for this road trip as a whole? I think just the defensive side, starting from the service line, how we were just dialed in. They passed a 2-4 last night against Drake and lost. But they were in-system a lot. And tonight was kind of the opposite that we were able to get the out-of-system quite a bit. And their offense is just-- it's high risk when you're in-system, in-out-of-system. But when you're out-of-system, it gets pretty risky. So I thought we'd a great job of making sure they were out-of-system quite a bit. And then our block took care of them out-of-system. We picked up all the junk stuff and really just turn easy stuff into points tonight. And UIC didn't play great, and I understand that. But we put the pressure on them, and then we just took it to them even though they weren't playing good. And that's really hard to do. It's easy to let up a little bit when another team's not playing great, and you're kind of on fire. And I don't think we did that at all. And that was impressive. I'll take it. U and I have spent most of the season being out-blocked by the opposition, and sometimes easily. But dating back to the intermission at Valpo and moving through the match today, U and I finished with 14 total rejections against Valpo, but 11 of them were across those final three sets. And now in just three sets today, you come up with 12. And Casey Reberts, obviously, helps lead the way, moves into the 600 block club in Valley history, by the way. So congratulations to her. Lily Dykstra with six of them, Kaitlyn Selner with five, and Selner coming off a career ice six last night. What has it been just over these last six sets, this last match and a half where this block is putting up not only the numbers it's doing, but perhaps also helping out the defense by maybe the ones they don't win, but maybe influence? Yeah, I don't know what we've done differently. I mean, those are two so different teams, a little bit higher and then super fast. I thought Casey today would just work in your butt off. Like, she was just everywhere and getting closed on really fast balls and just getting over, which is all you have to do when it's that low and fast. Yeah, and Lily contributed a few tonight, which was really good. Yeah, I just thought we were really solid in every facet of the game. And when you were capable of doing that to somebody as good as you I see, we were very rolling. That was really fun to see. Now, in addition to-- and I would assume, given where we're getting post game from, it's a pizza for the ride home, right? Correct. Yeah, I would try to assume most of the bus is probably doing. It's certainly well earned after the weekend that was. Once you get through that, once it digests, once you get some rest back home, what does it take to now? Turn things around, keep things going with Belmont and Murray State coming in next week. Yeah, I haven't seen anything from them. So definitely have to dive into them a little bit on the way back, for sure. I think they're both-- I thought Murray State would be pretty decent this year. I think Belmont is playing a little bit better. And so we'll dive into them and see what they got. Belmont was young last year. And they had some pieces, for sure. I thought they underperformed a little bit last year, based on what they had. And they'll be ready to go. I mean, every night for us is going to be a challenge, just because we have to be able to bring it, and know that teams are going to bring it against us, just because they want to be the first team to take us down. So we're going to have to be ready to go. Luckily, we're at home, and hopefully we get a decent crown next weekend.
