VU VOLLEYBALL BACK-TO-BACK UNDEFEATED REGION 24 CHAMPIONS

VINCENNES, Ind. – The No. 1 seed Vincennes University volleyball team successfully defended their Region 24 crown Saturday afternoon at the P.E. Complex with a sweep over No. 2 seed John A. Logan College 25-16, 25-21, 25-23.

The Trailblazers completed their second straight 12-0 Region 24 season, moving their winning streak to 24 matches against Region 24 opponents.

The win Saturday was also Vincennes Head Coach Gary Sien's 700th career victory, as Coach Sien came away with the NJCAA Region 24 Coach of the Year award.

Vincennes got off to a slow start on their home floor Saturday and were forced to play from behind early in the opening set.

VU would grab a small lead after a 4-0 run before later regaining and extending their lead with a 7-0 scoring run.

Vincennes put the first set away with a 6-0 scoring run as VU took the first set of the match 25-16.

After falling behind again to start the second set, the Trailblazers responded again to take the lead with a 4-0 scoring run.

VU would grow their lead to five before the Volunteers rallied back to even the score at 20-20.

Vincennes then use a 4-0 scoring run to help close out the second set by scoring five of the last six points to take set two 25-21 and take a 2-0 match lead.

The Trailblazers looked to close out the sweep in the third set but again had to battle from behind early.

Vincennes would used four separate small 3-0 scoring runs to slowly chip away at the John A. Logan lead before taking the lead at 21-20 and holding on as the third set goes the distance and VU comes away with the 25-23 set win.

"The entire time since I've been back with the team I've been thinking about my father," VUVB Head Coach Gary Sien said after his father passed away in early September. "His birthday was yesterday. So that has been prominently on my mind and if nothing else, after winning today, the thought of him comes up."

"I don't keep track of my wins, my family does," Sien added. "My brother has been texting me the last couple of weeks telling me how many wins away I am from 700. I promised him I would mention that, even though I didn't want to."

"The toughest thing to do in sports is defend a title," Sien said. "Playing the whole season with the proverbial target on your back and it wasn't like we returned all of the major players from last years team. When you do, they know what they have to defend, but when you have a lot of new players, like we do, then it can take them a whole season to really understand the level of competition and the rivalries that we have in Region 24."

"I always want to credit our sophomores for always instilling in our freshmen how important this is," Sien added. "As the saying goes, it's sometimes not as difficult to win it as it is to defend it. There were several moments when we could have dropped it, like last night. That's always a challenge when everybody is always gunning for you. But I have said all year that this group has been an awesome group to work with. Once they got an understanding of how important these Region games are, they really competed and I think now, after winning today, these freshmen will fully understand what this is about."

"We really wanted to instill in the freshmen that what we did last year was historic, but let's not stop there," Sien said. "Let's keep going and do something else that is going to make history here and we are still not done. We have a chance next week to host the District Tournament and that's another major step for this program. We are not done and this sophomore group knows that. They have been talking about Districts for over a year now. About how disappointed they were a year ago. I think now the freshmen understand what the sophomores have been talking about."

"When you have goals for your program, when you reach one, we say let's go for another one," Sien added. "When you reach those types of milestones and goals, that's when you can say if a program has success or not. With this youthful group that we have, especially after today, they understand that now and I believe that they understand it fully."

VU was led offensively by the freshman hitting duo of Paige Parlanti (Las Vegas, Nev.) and Audrey Buis (Franklin, Ind.).

Parlanti finished off her 23rd double-double of the season with 12 kills, 15 digs four blocks and two aces, while Buis ended the day with 10 kills and one block.

Freshman Alexis Chrappa (Effingham, Ill.) finished with seven kills, two blocks and one dig, while sophomore Malgorzata Banasiak (Gdynia, Poland) came away with six kills and three blocks.

Freshmen Tuana Turhan (Ankara, Turkey) and Nisa Salis (Ankara, Turkey) again protected the net well with Turhan ending with three kills, six blocks and three digs, while Salis picked up two kills, five blocks and three set assists.

Sophomore Hannah Graber rounds out the VU offense with one kill, two aces, nine digs and a team-high 21 set assists.

Graber helped run the VU offense with fellow sophomore setter Josephine Mulligan (Saint John, Ind.) who ended her day with 14 set assists, six digs and one ace.

Freshman libero Morgan Netcott (Montague, Mich.) led the Blazers defensively with 24 digs, three set assists and a pair of aces.

Sophomore Lara Gomes de Castro (Sao Paulo, Brazil) also came through to add 11 digs and one ace for the Blazers.

"It's kind of hard to just mention any individual players today because everyone contributed so fully," Sien said. "It's almost like you can't just single out one or two players, it was everybody. The offense was very nicely balanced. Paige was our highest with 12 kills, but even that's not a whole lot in a three-set match. Audrey had 10 and everyone else had between three and seven. That's a really nice balance."

"We had some difficulty with our serve receive and first contact last night, but the team said before we left the locker room today that we had to continue to play like we did in sets four and five last night," Sien added. "It was like we said we were going to have a short memory and forget all about sets two and three last night, it's a distant memory now and just continue that run from four and five because we played so differently. It was almost like having two different teams out there."

"I just really want to get a lot of credit to our mentality today as a team," Sien said. "The team realized what they needed to do, set goals and then did it. As a coach, when you have players that step up like that and talk about those things amongst themselves, what more can you say. Not only did they say it, but then they went out and did it."

"We could mention the individual performers, but I just really want to give credit to how we approached this game as a team," Sien added. "From this morning when we first got together, through warmups, this team handled it nearly perfect today and the way the game came about was a result of that. We as coaches can't be any more proud of them for taking that initiative. We have some tremendous leaders and when they decide that it's time to step up, we are a much better team."

The Trailblazers will continue playing next weekend when VU hosts one of two NJCAA Midwest District Championship tournaments.

The Midwest District consists of teams from Region 24, Region 16 in Missouri and Region 11 in Iowa.

The Trailblazers will host the District Championships next weekend on Sunday, Nov. 6. Teams and game times are yet to be announced.

"This is kind of like our third season," Sien said. "We had the regular season, you have the second season with the Region Tournament, but now we are likely playing teams that we haven't played this season."

"This sophomore group really wants to have a since of redemption and really want their chance after they felt that we should have done better last year at Districts," Sien added. "So, you have that in play, plus we get to play at home. That's huge. Especially because it's really hard to beat us at home. I've been saying for two years, it seems like the stars have aligned where not only do we host the Region, but Region 24 hosts the Districts as well. So, everything is really in our favor to do extremely well."

"We just really want to prove that our Region is competitive," Sien said. "That's something that I have had in mind really since day one. The Regions in Missouri and Iowa are really good, but we want to prove that we belong. In a sense, in Region 24, we compete against each other, but when we go to the District Tournament, we are going to root for the other Region 24 schools. What better way to show that we belong than being the Region 24 to advance the furthest, that's the goal that we have in front of us."

No. 4 seed Kaskaskia defeated No. 3 seed Lake Land College in the Region 24 Third-Place game Saturday morning in four sets, 25-18, 20-25, 25-15, 28-26.

BOX SCORE

John A. Logan – 16   21   23   x   x

VUVB (29-8, 12-0) – 25   25   25   x   x

INDIVIDUAL STATS

Josephine Mulligan – 1 point, 1 ace, 6 digs, 14 set assists

Audrey Buis – 10.5 points, 10 kills, 1 block assist

Lara Gomes de Castro – 1 point, 1 ace, 11 digs

Morgan Netcott – 2 points, 2 aces, 24 digs, 3 set assists

Paige Parlanti – 16 points, 2 aces, 12 kills, 4 block assists, 15 digs

Alexis Chrappa – 8 points, 7 kills, 2 block assists, 1 dig

Nisa Salis – 4.5 points, 2 kills, 5 block assists, 3 set assists

Tuana Turhan – 6.5 points, 3 kills, 1 solo block, 5 block assists, 3 digs

Hannah Graber – 3 points, 2 aces, 1 kill, 9 digs, 21 set assists

Malgorzata Banasiak – 7.5 points, 6 kills, 3 block assists