At 6-6 going into regular season Ohio Valley Conference play, the Eastern volleyball team has gathered an idea of where it stands and what the players need to do to be successful this season.

Coming out of their third straight weekend tournament, the Panthers have found certain areas of their game upon which they need to not necessarily change, but improve upon.

“There is nothing we need to do or change.we just need to worry about our side of the net and play our game and play defense well,” junior outside hitter Alex Zwettler said.

Though the Panthers may not change much as far as their strategy going into the regular season, last weekend’s Best Western ISU Classic revealed a few areas the Panthers will need to improve on to be successful.

Holding on to the lead

Even in some of the matches the Panthers have won this season, holding onto the lead is something that has been difficult to accomplish.

A good example is Eastern’s home opener versus the Illinois-Chicago Sept. 8. Though the Panthers ended up winning the match, many times, the team would build up early leads only to let the Flames storm their back into it later on in the set.

In their first set against the Flames, the Panthers allowed UIC to go on a 6-0 run to claim the lead and eventually win the set. In the second set of the match, the Panthers amounted an 8-3 lead, only to allow the Flames to put on the pressure, and tie the set at 15-all, 17-all and 19-all.

“We need to learn to play hard all the time,” Eastern head coach Alan Segal said.

Unforced errors

The first two matches of the Best Western ISU Classic were full of unforced errors by the Panthers.

Many times, those unforced errors let the opponent back in the match.

In the first match against Indiana State, Eastern took an early 4-1 lead in the first set. However, after three unforced, the set became tied at five.

This eventually led to Indiana State winning the set 25-23.

“We had way too many errors.hitting, serving, ball handling, and blocking errors,” Zwettler said.

In its match versus Ball State last Saturday, BSU topped Eastern in hitting (.245 to .045), kills (40-27), and assists (36-23).”

Kevin Maras can be reached at 581-7944 or kjmaras@eiu.edu.

Junior middle blocker Jorie Dieter attempts to spike the ball past a defender during the match against Illinois-Chicago in Lantz Arena on Sept. 8.(Eric Hiltner/The Daily Eastern News)

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