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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports volleyball

Volleyball travels to Chicago today

spVolleyball

IU volleyball travels to Chicago today as the team tries to extend its perfect ?season.

IU (6-0) will play the University of Illinois-Chicago (2-5) at 11 a.m. and Eastern Kentucky (7-2) at 3 p.m.

The Hoosiers are coming off two consecutive weekend sweeps of the UConn Classic and the Indiana Invitational, respectively.

The 6-0 start is the best beginning to a season since the 2010 team started the year 12-0.

The 2010 team was the first and only team in program history to advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

Through the beginning of the season, IU hasn’t played the same level of competition as it will face in the Big Ten.

The Big Ten is widely regarded as the nation’s top volleyball conference.

IU has defeated a pair of prominent programs in Mississippi State and UConn.

The match against the Huskies was the only time this year IU has played in a match that went five sets.

After some competition in the preseason, junior Courtney Harnish seems to have earned the role of the team’s libero. She is second in the Big Ten in digs per set.

Several other Hoosiers are near the top in the Big Ten in other statistical categories.

Junior Amelia Anderson and senior Morgan Leach rank eighth and 11th in kills per set, respectively.

Sophomore Megan Tallman leads the conference in assists per set.

Sophomore Taylor Lebo leads the Big Ten in service aces, and junior Awele Nwaeze is third in the Big Ten in blocks per set.

However, one thing IU Coach Sherry Dunbar-Kruzan said she wants to improve upon is the team’s hitting percentage.

Out of 14 Big Ten teams, IU ranks 11th with a hitting percentage of .219.

For comparison, Penn State’s .370 hitting percentage leads the Big Ten.

Dunbar said even though her team is 6-0, it needs to get its hitting percentage up because when Big Ten play starts, the competition is tougher and the team needs to convert on kills more.

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