Oct. 21, 2006

Final Stats

Mt. Pleasant, MI - Junior OH Sarah Kreher's career-high 20 kills and .311 attack percentage weren't enough for the Rockets tonight as Toledo (6-17, 3-7 MAC) dropped a 3-1 (30-26, 23-30, 30-25, 30-28) decision to Central Michigan (15-7, 5-5 MAC) at Rose Arena. Even with the defeat, UT remains tied for third place in the MAC's West Division.

Three other Rockets also tallied double figures in kills with sophomore OH Shannon Strachan posting an impressive career-best .567 ATK% and 18 kills, freshman OH Stephanie Kersting notching 16 kills and senior OH Kate Bean adding 11 terminations.

Senior libero Lora Sarich led the way defensively with 25 digs with Bean and junior S Emi Holsclaw adding 14 digs.

Sophomore Whitney Evers led CMU's offense with 18 kills in addition to five blocks, while senior Mary Ochmanek added 13 kills to go along with a match-high eight blocks.

Toledo hit .249 in the match with 71 kills compared to CMU's .212 mark and 66 kills. The Chippewas did have a sizeable advantage in the blocks and aces departments, though, as CMU had 12 blocks to the Rockets' four and seven aces to UT's one.

"We did some good things against a solid team tonight and played pretty well," UT Head Coach Kent Miller said. "We gave up some big leads at the start of games and put ourselves into a hole. We had some great play by our right-side players, Sarah Kreher and Shannon Strachan, and Brittany Alaburda also provided some solid contributions in the middle."

The Chippewas jumped out to early leads in games one and three and never trailed in either stanza. Game four was a see-saw battle that featured five lead changes before CMU won by two points.

CMU hit just .053 in its game two loss and after the break, the Chippewas jumped out to a 9-1 lead in the third frame thanks to three services aces in the opening moments.

Game four was tied at 25 but Kristen Wiloch had back-to-back kills that sparked CMU to close out the match.

The Chippewas' victory snapped the Rockets' three-game win streak in the series between the two schools.

Toledo returns to action next weekend with a pair of road matches at Western Michigan on Friday, Oct. 27 and Northern Illinois on Saturday, Oct. 28.