Braves Close Road Swing At Illinois St. & Evansville

Josh Schwam

Volleyball 10/31/2019 11:00:00 AM

PEORIA, Ill. -- Bradley Volleyball faces a pair of key road tests with the Braves closing out a season-long, four-match road swing with a Friday night contest at I-74 rival Illinois State (6 p.m.) in a battle for third place in the Missouri Valley Conference standings in addition to the season's first matchup with Evansville Monday.

Currently tied with Illinois State (13-9 overall, 6-4 MVC) heading into the Friday night match at Redbird Arena, Bradley (10-11 overall, 6-4 MVC) topped ISU in five sets in the season's first meeting on Oct. 4 at Renaissance Coliseum and the Braves will be trying to sweep the regular-season series from the Redbirds for the first time since 2001.

Evansville (14-7 overall, 5-5 MVC) enters the weekend one match behind Bradley in the Valley standings at 5-5 heading into matches at second-place Loyola (Friday) and a Saturday road contest at Valparaiso. The Braves have won the last three meetings with the Purple Aces going into Monday's 6 p.m. tilt. Each of the last three matches in the series played in Evansville, Ind., have gone to a deciding fifth set.

Friday's match at Illinois State will be available on ESPN3, while Monday's outing at Evansville can be viewed on ESPN+. BradleyBraves.com will provide links to live stats for both matches.

Senior setter Hannah Angeli returned to the Bradley lineup for the final two sets of Saturday's three-set victory at Southern Illinois after missing eight consecutive matches due to an injury suffered in the MVC opener against SIU back on Sept. 27. Angeli collected 13 assists, four digs and three aces in her two sets of action against the Salukis Saturday and is currently leading the MVC in aces per set (0.44).

Bradley has three setters averaging at least 4.18 assists per set, paced by Angeli's team-best 6.36 per set, and for the first time in school history the Braves have three individuals with 250 or more assists. Freshman Carlee Camlin posted her second double-double of the year last Friday at Missouri State, finishing with 30 assists and 10 digs and leads the Braves in total assists (322).

Bradley improved to 3-2 in MVC road matches with a three-set victory at Southern Illinois Saturday as the Braves picked up their third straight road win in the series with the Salukis. BU had just three road wins in the SIU series between the 2003 and 2016 seasons prior to the current three-match road win streak. The Braves are now 6-3 in their last nine MVC road matches and have eight Valley road wins over the last two seasons to equal the most conference road wins in a two-year stretch since 2002 and 2003.

Sophomore Hannah Thompson pushed her career dig total over 900 last weekend as she tallied her 17th double-double of the year with 12 kills and 22 digs Saturday at Southern Illinois. She is now the 10th player in school history to collect at least 600 kills and 900+ digs, but is the first Brave to reach those marks since 2005. Already 19th in Bradley history with 918 career digs, Thompson is 82 digs short of becoming the 18th player in Bradley history to reach 1,000 career digs.

Freshman Raeann Bergman has averaged 1.64 blocks per set over the last four matches, helping the Braves average 2.86 blocks per set over that stretch. In fact, the Braves had 14 blocks at Missouri State (Oct. 25) for the team's highest block total since the 2016 season opener. Fellow freshman Karagan Coggin has a team-best 73 blocks on the year and needs one for more the most blocks by a Bradley freshman since Megan Schmidt had 97 in 2008.

After wrapping up the four-match road swing Monday at Evansville, Bradley plays four of the final six regular-season matches of the season at Renaissance Coliseum starting Friday, Nov. 8 with a home contest against Drake (6 p.m.).

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