Lakeland College

Lakeland goes 2-4 at Midwest 10 play day

Athletics - posted on 2/4/2012

The Lakeland College men's volleyball team finished 2-4 at Saturday's Midwest Volleyball Association's play day in Milwaukee, Wis.

The Muskies (4-6 overall, 2-2 WVC) lost their first two matches of the day, falling to defending national champions and first-ranked UW-Oshkosh, 2-0 (23-25, 19-25), followed by a 2-0 (22-25, 24-26) loss to No. 22 UW-Milwaukee, both WVC members. In their second set of matches, Lakeland lost to No. 14 Northern Illinois University 2-0 (23-25, 22-25), then won their first match of the day, defeating Iowa St. 2-1 (26-24, 19-25, 15-7). In their final two matches the Muskies went 1-1, losing to Illinois St. 2-1 (20-25, 25-22, 11-15) before winning their final match over Ball St. 2-1 (19-25, 25-17, 15-10).

Against UW-Oshkosh freshman Alec Redlich (Wauwatosa, Wis.) led the Muskies with eight kills while senior libero Andrew Cheever (Greenfield, Wis.) had seven digs. In their second match against UW-Milwaukee, senior Beau Bradshaw (Oak Lawn, Ill.) and freshman Braden Woods (Downers Grove, Ill.) each recorded seven kills. Woods had a hitting percentage of .875, which would be a team record but he didn't record 15 attempts.

Against Northern Illinois Redlich led the team with 12 kills and Cheever led the defense with 12 digs. In the team's first win Redlich had another 12 kills and recorded six aces, two behind 2010 graduate, first-year head coach, Joe Julkowski for most aces in a match. Cheever added 11 digs.

In the loss to Illinois State Redlich again led the team with 13 kills, while Bradshaw and senior Dan Sheets-Poling (Plainfield, Ill.) each added seven kills. Freshman setter Dayton Erickson (Trevor, Wis.) had 35 assists. In the Muskies second win, sophomore Matt Bilinski (Batavia, Ill.) led the team with 11 kills, hitting .667. Redlich added 10 kills and Woods finished with eight kills. Sophomore Ralph Kokoszka (Palos Heights, Ill.) tallied seven kills.

"We made every match close today, we just couldn't finish," said Lakeland head coach Joe Julkowski. "If one aspect of our game was off, the others followed. We weren't able to pick each other up. We need to learn how to finish our matches and win games when we don't have our best game."

Redlich led the tournament with 58 kills, while Woods was second on the team with 39 kills. Cheever finished with 48 digs.

Lakeland returns to action on Wednesday, Feb. 8, as the Muskies travel to Whitewater, Wis. to face Wisconsin Volleyball Conference foe, UW-Whitewater. The match begins at 8 p.m.

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