A huge day for Northwestern athletics received an unexpected boost of major proportions at about 9:35 p.m. Saturday.
That’s when freshman middle blocker Ericka Lange rose high to stuff Penn State All-American candidate Katie Schumacher, giving NU a come-from-behind 3-2 upset over defending NCAA champion Penn State at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
The volleyball team watched as much of the NU-Wisconsin football game as they could before preparing for their own matchup with a top-10 team.
Coach Keylor Chan said the type of success the gridiron Cats had in Madison, Wis., Saturday afternoon just might have had something to do with it.
“It rubs off,” Chan said, referring to NU’s football win. “It’s contagious in the fact that if our teams can do it in other sports, we can do it too. I guess we didn’t want to be shown up. Wisconsin’s No. 7 in the polls, Penn State’s No. 3, and we wanted to have the bigger day.”
The Cats (4-8, 1-1 Big Ten) knocked off No. 3 Penn State Saturday for the first time since Nov. 23, 1991.
The Nittany Lions (11-3, 0-2 Big Ten) had downed NU 16 consecutive times.
NU opened Big Ten play Friday with a 3-1 home loss to Indiana (10-2, 1-1 Big Ten).
Against Penn State, sophomore Sarah Ballog led the Cats with a career-high 25 kills. Lange chipped in 20 kills and 13 blocks and Kelli Meyer had 68 assists for NU.
Katie Schumacher and Mishka Levy combined for 48 kills for Penn State, which opened its Big Ten season with a loss to No. 14 Wisconsin Friday.
“Penn State has an excellent team,” Chan said. “It was just our night. Everything came together, everything we’ve been trying to teach our girls. And they did it tonight. We executed very well.”
The turning point of the match came at the start of Game 4. Penn State led the match 2-1 and had just completed a 15-4 shellacking of NU in game three.
But the Cats answered by capitalizing on Penn State errors early in Game 4, and a huge block by NU’s Carmen Burbach gave the Cats a 4-0 lead. The Lions stuck around and took the lead at 9-8 on a kill and a block from Levy.
After a few Penn State errors and a Burbach kill, NU found itself up 14-11.
Lange won Game 4 with a timely kill, ending a wild exchange that included a terrific sprawling dig by Penn State’s Amanda Rome and a hustling run-down by Burbach after Ballog blocked a strong spike with her forehead.
Game 5 was tight throughout. NU built an early 4-1 lead, but Penn State knotted the game at 6-6, 7-7, 9-9 and 12-12 before an NU dig found the sideline and Lange’s block sealed the upset.
“We started out the Big Ten a little slow (Friday),” Lange said. “We were just so pumped up to play this game. The way we came together on the court — I think we just played awesome.”
Ballog said the Cats’ rough non-conference schedule gave her teammates the confidence they needed to drop an upset like this on Penn State.
“You can have an easy preseason schedule and be 10-0,” Ballog said. “And that’s great, but you’re not going to be any better. And with our tough schedule we got so much added experience against big blocks and big hitters that helped us out a lot.”
The Cats have now played the top four teams in the nation this season. NU opened the season on a 12-day road trip, dropping the first seven matches of the season to a slate that included now-No. 1 Nebraska, No. 2 Hawaii and No. 4 Colorado State.
Ten days ago Chan was still looking for his first win as a head coach at NU.
Now he’s trying to stay focused on the rest of the Big Ten season after knocking off the defending national champions.
“We’re still a long way from where we want to be,” Chan said, “But a win like this is just immense for our program.”
