Volleyball rebounds from tough set to top Indiana

His message is always the same.

Passing and serving — it wins games.

And in the second set of the North Carolina volleyball team’s 3-1 victory against Indiana Saturday, coach Joe Sagula saw his theory hold true yet again.

In the error-filled set, the team tallied up four service and five attack errors en route to its only dropped set of the ACC-Big 10 Challenge that featured the Tar Heels, Illinois and Indiana. UNC swept Illinois 3-0 Friday night.

“It was not pretty volleyball compared to what we had seen (Friday) night in terms of the crispness in the passing and the serving and the hitting,” Sagula said.

Redshirt freshman Taylor Treacy said the team needed to better balance serving power with strategy.

“We just have to serve tough but still stay smart about our serves,” she said.

“I think we were making errors because we were thinking about it too much. One of the reasons why we lost the second set was because we were just serving bloopers over the net.”

UNC’s only service ace in the second set against the Hoosiers came from sophomore outside hitter Leigh Andrew.

The team returned to the locker room between the second and third sets and emerged playing the cleaner, more-disciplined volleyball Sagula had hoped for.

Sagula attributed the team’s turn-around to Treacy and fellow redshirt freshman Hayley McCorkle, as well as the team’s ability to get back into a rhythm.

Though Treacy and McCorkle contributed just two kills and six total blocks, the personnel adjustments seemed to do the trick.

“I was just proud of how then they found a way with some different people stepping in to help us, which is what we’ve planned for all year,” Sagula said.

The team had five service errors in the second half of the match and went on to defeat the Hoosiers in four sets.

Treacy said it was just about the team shaking off the second set.

“It’s just a mindset,” Treacy said.

“When we’ve gone on a streak with a lot of errors, it gets to our heads and a lot of the time we’ll think about the point that just happened. So, it’s about erasing everything that just happened and moving and looking forward.”

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