Wisconsin volleyball beats Penn State, advances to regional final against Oregon

MADISON – Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield brought Devyn Robinson, Caroline Crawford and Carter Booth to the post-match press conference Thursday night but really he could have brought almost any of his players.

It was that kind of night for the Badgers volleyball team.

Wisconsin advanced to the regional final with a 3-1 win over Penn State in front of a rowdy crowd of 7,229 at the UW Field House that was marked by the team’s work from the service line and work at the block.

It was also marked by balance. UW (29-3) had a lot of cooks adding to the pot for its 25-11, 28-30, 25-12, 25-18 win.

“I thought our serving set up an awful lot tonight,” Sheffield said. “Our servers went back there and executed the game plan and I thought defensively we were awfully good. We had good ball control and our setters were getting the ball to the areas we wanted to. They did a really good job of keeping the offense balanced. We’re excited to still be playing.”

The win leaves Wisconsin one win away from its fourth trip to the Final Four in five seasons. The Badgers will face Oregon, which swept Purdue Thursday, at 7 p.m. Saturday in the regional final.

The Badgers' 17 blocks were one below their season high. Senior Caroline Crawford finished with a season-high 10. Sophomore Carter Booth finished with seven and senior Devyn Robinson and junior Anna Smrek totaled five each.

That work at the net was matched offensively as four players finished with double-digit kills. Senior Sarah Franklin fought through a tough evening percentage wise to get a team-high 15 while graduate student Temi Thomas-Ailara added 11 and Robinson and Carter posted 10 each.

Carter (.750) and Robinson (.429) were the most efficient hitters as UW avenged a four-set loss to the Nittany Lions Nov. 11 that came when Smrek was out with an injury.

Robinson felt the team played with a chip on its shoulder

“We could have done better the first time we played them,” she said. “We weren’t at full strength. We are still not (as good as we can be) yet but we’re steadily climbing.”

Given the earlier outcome, the ease with which Wisconsin handled Penn State at times was impressive. They ran away with the first and third sets and led the as many as 11 in the final set before Penn State trimmed a few points off its deficit.

UW held them to .082 hitting, the eighth time the Badgers held an opponent below .100, despite allowing a .326 percentage in the second set.

A common thread in those sets was the Badgers’ block. Booth, Robinson and Smrek set the tone in the first set and Crawford made her presence felt later in the match. Nine of her blocks came in the final two sets.

“They’re a dynamic, big, aggressive team and they’re going to do some great things in the rest of this tournament,” Penn State coach Katie Schmacher-Crawley said. “We weren’t passing well at certain points. We couldn’t side out. We didn’t really have a whole lot going for us but we found a way to gut some points out.Hats off to Wisconsin and how they played.”

The lopsided scores lent itself to some extensive serving runs.

Four times a player had a streak of serving at least five straight points. Graduate student Izzy Ashburn, who finished with 22 assists, had a run of six straight in the first set. Senior MJ Hammill, who posted 20 assists and 14 digs for her ninth double-double of the season, had run of 11 straight in the third set. Sophomore Gulce Guctekin did it twice, going for five straight in the third set and nine straight in the fourth.

It was that kind of night for the Badgers, who are back in the Elite Eight for the sixth straight season and closer to where they want to be

“I think there is always room to grow and room to strive to perfection," Booth said. "That’s what we do every day. I don’t know necessarily know if we’ll reach perfection but that’s the fun of it.”