For the second consecutive contest, Ohio went into a match as a heavy favorite against a Mid-American Conference foe, and for the second consecutive contest, that team took the Bobcats to five sets.
Ohio (19-9, 11-3) trailed Central Michigan (14-11, 7-7) two games to one heading into the fourth set, but rallied to defeat the Chippewas in five (25-23, 24-26, 18-25, 25-15, 15-10).
Early in the first set, the Chippewas had a hitting percentage of .700. But with the score tied 10-10, the Chippewas made some mistakes and the Bobcats benefitted from those errors.
Ohio held the lead for the rest of the set. Both teams failed to establish a substantial lead; the largest lead for either team was only three points.
Freshman outside hitter Chelsea Bilger paced Ohio with seven kills in the set, and her most important kill ended the set.
“I thought she was (the) go-to in the first two sets,” Ohio coach Ryan Theis said. “It might have been her best (all season). The numbers may not compute to her best match, but all around, she played really well tonight.”
Theis said it was good to see Bilger play well in front of her high-school coach and joked that they should bring the coach to more games.
“That gave me some incentive to play better to show them that they did raise a good volleyball player,” Bilger said.
After Ohio took the first, the Chippewas rallied to take the next two sets.
In the second set, Ohio held a four-point advantage but let it slip away. Central Michigan scored on a block from Kelly Maxwell that came in between two kills by Kaitlyn McIntyre. An attack error by Ohio’s Kelly Lamberti allowed Central Michigan to even the score.
The third set was Ohio’s worst of the match. The Bobcats fell behind and could not recover. From that point, Ohio focused on prolonging the match to a fifth game.
“Once we were down 2-1, we like our chances in a fifth set,” Theis said. “We actually were thinking we just need to stop Lindsey Dulude. She was terrific tonight, and if she plays like that the rest of the season, they are going to be really, really hard to beat.”
Dulude finished with 18 kills and a .405 hitting percentage.
After taking the final two sets, the Bobcats pushed their record to 7-1 in 5-game matches.
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