Iowa State Edges Florida

Iowa State and Florida, both undefeated and nationally ranked coming into today's Labor Day matinee in Gainesville, played a suspenseful match, with the Cyclones prevailing, 16-14 in Game 5 (box score). ISU had won the first two games and Florida, Games 3 and 4.

For the match, the Gators outhit (.251-.208) and outblocked (16-8) the Cyclones. As shown in the following graph, however, the two teams' game-specific hitting percentages were all over the place.

Junior middle blocker Jamie Straube, one of the Cyclones' top hitters from a year ago, hit .321 against the Gators. Kelsey Petersen, a senior right-side hitter, led ISU with a hitting line of 15 kills and 2 errors on  23 attempts, for a .565 percentage, with soph MB/RS Tenisha Matlock adding a .294 performance.

Florida exhibited a balanced offensive attack, with five players being set 23 or more times. Of the five most frequently set Gators, two hit in the high-.200s, Cassandra Anderson (27 attempts, .296) and Tangerine Wiggs (36, .278). The other three all hit in the low-.200s, Kristy Jaeckel (40, .225), Kelly Murphy (23, .217), and Stephanie Ferrell (30, .200).

The Gators, with 7 service aces but 17 errors, appeared to serve more aggressively than did the Cyclones, who had 3 aces and 11 errors. In the middle-to-late stages of the decisive Game 5, Florida missed 3 serves.

Florida now moves on to the Big Four tournament beginning this coming Friday, along with Texas, Penn State, and host Stanford. Iowa State continues its current stretch of road matches, with  two at North Dakota State this coming weekend and then ones at Northern Iowa (Sept. 13) and at Nebraska (Sept. 17). With the Huskers' departure to the Big 10, of course, the ISU-Nebraska match will be of the nonconference variety.