The No. 15 Ohio State women’s volleyball team showed no signs of a letdown following its upset of No. 6 Penn State on Wednesday as they defeated Purdue handily on Friday at St. John Arena.
Freshman Stacey Gordon led the team with a match-high 19 kills and junior Shelly Draeger tied her own match record of seven aces as the Buckeyes finished off the Boilermakers in a three-game match that lasted a little over an hour.
The victory allowed Ohio State to remain undefeated at 12-0 and gave them their fourth win in the Big Ten Conference. The loss dropped Purdue to 1-8, 1-2 in conference play.
“We knew going in that their record wasn’t that great,” senior Anne Botica said. “We focused on just getting on them right away.”
The Buckeyes pulled away in a seemingly tight first game with six straight points on two kills from Gordon and two aces from Botica to extend an 11-8 lead to 17-8. They would go on to take the game, 30-18.
The second game was more of the same as the Buckeyes led just 10-8 before an 11-2 run extended the margin to 21-10.
Ohio State closed out the game with another six straight points to make it 30-13. Gordon and junior Suzie Stiling each had five kills in the game and Draeger added four aces.
In the third game, Ohio State roared out to a 14-7 lead but a Purdue comeback closed the gap to 19-17.
A third six-point run for the Buckeyes opened up a 25-17 lead, and Gordon closed out the match with a powerful kill to polish off the Boilermakers, 30-21. Botica led Ohio State with eight kills.
The Buckeyes’ offense was engineered by a 46-assist performance from junior Katie Virtue. Botica had 16 kills and five aces, while Stiling added 12 kills of her own.
Purdue was led by Leah Wischmeier’s six kills and 18 assists from Jen Bova.
OSU head coach Jim Stone was pleased with his team’s composure following the win over Penn State just two days earlier.
“Coming off an emotional game like Penn State, it would have been easy to come out here and have a let down,” Stone said. “Purdue is a young team, and they have better days ahead of them.”
The Buckeyes were wary of a possible letdown.
“We said before we came out that anything can happen,” Gordon said. “We knew that if we just played our game that we’d be fine.”
Ohio State goes for its 13th straight win on Friday at Northwestern before a showdown with the No. 7 Wisconsin Badgers on Saturday.
“Our conference is the toughest one in the country,” Stone said. “There are a lot of land mines out there for sure”.
