2009 Missouri State volleyball season review: Bears Hit 20 Wins for 11th Straight Year

One win away. While it’s impossible to say for sure whether the 2009 Missouri State volleyball Bears would have earned a fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament berth with one more win, it is easy to point a handful of losses throughout the season that could have made the difference, including the five-set defeat to Wichita State in the MVC Tournament that ended the season uncharacteristically early for a program that had become accustomed to playing into December for much of the decade.
    In all, Missouri State’s 21-10 overall record and second-place Missouri Valley Conference finish with a 14-4 league mark will be remembered as a successful year despite ultimately falling short of the program’s lofty expectations.

On the Bubble
    The Bears were the epitome of a bubble team following the regular season, sitting at 51st in the RPI before an MVC Tournament loss to Wichita State. While Missouri State made it in the field in 2006 and 2007 with similar computer ratings, the Bears were denied a fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament trip when the bracket came out.
    In all, two teams rated lower than the Bears made it in - Washington State at 53rd and Clemson at 57th - while three teams above MSU were also left out, including Pittsburgh (44th), North Dakota State (45th) and Furman (48th).

Ups and Downs in Non-Conference Play
    The Bears started slowly in the season’s opening tournament, going 1-2 at the Oregon Classic with losses to Eastern Washington and 13th-ranked Oregon sandwiched around a five-set win over San Francisco, but responded to win six in a row after that for a 7-2 start to 2009.
    MSU got healthy against the field in the Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Invitational at Hammons Student Center, dropping just two sets on the way to wins against UC Davis, Memphis, Mississippi State and Stephen F. Austin. Calli Norman and Cara Hackmann shared tournament MVP honors, and Megan Bess put away a season best 18 kills in the finale over SFA.
    The Bears carried that momentum into Ohio University’s tournament the next week, beating Eastern Kentucky and Delaware on the first day in Athens, the second win giving Melissa Stokes her 300th victory at Missouri State.
    Up next came one of the costly losses of the season, a five-set defeat at the hands of Indiana in which the Bears failed to capitalize on match point opportunities in both the fourth and fifth sets and dropping the last three points of the match after holding a 15-14 fifth-set lead.
    The exhausted Bears fell 3-1 the next day to an Ohio team bound for the NCAA Tournament, sending their record to 7-4 heading into MVC play the next week at home against Illinois State and Indiana State.

Bears Get Hot in League Action
    Missouri State dispatched the Redbirds and Sycamores easily during the first weekend of league play and then scored an upset of No. 20 Wichita State the next week, using a five-set win to end the Shockers’ streak of 38 consecutive MVC road wins.
   The wins continued to pile up with road sweeps of Drake and Creighton the next week and a home sweep of Southern Illinois before an epic five-set win over Evansville on Oct. 10. The Bears and Aces traded set victories throughout the match, and Cara Hackmann stole the show with an MVC record 46 digs that stood as the highest single-match total in the NCAA in 2009.
   A perfect 8-0 league start was completed with an Oct. 16 win at Bradley, setting up a showdown with the league’s other 8-0 squad, UNI, the next night in Cedar Falls. The Panthers prevailed in four sets on their way to an 18-0 regular season and conference tournament title.
    That setback started a mini-slide that included a 3-0 loss at Wichita State on Oct. 23 and a five-set defeat at IPFW two days later in a non-conference match.
    The IPFW contest was another “what-if?” match that could be looked to at the end of the year, as the Bears fought off two IPFW match points for a 14-14 tie in the fifth set, only to watch the Mastodons record two kills to land the upset.
    Wins over Creighton, Drake and Evansville followed and moved the Bears’ record to 18-7 overall and 11-2 in the league entering their Nov. 7 match at Southern Illinois, a team MSU had easily swept in the season’s first meeting.
    The Salukis presented much more of a challenge this time around, handing the Bears yet another five-set loss they wished they could have back. After thumping the Salukis 25-14 in the fourth set to tie the match, Missouri State never led in the deciding set on the way to a 15-11 loss.
    The Bears lost their next match to UNI at home on Nov. 13 to drop to third in the league race, and spent the next night sweeping Bradley and rooting for the Panthers to win at Wichita State. UNI came through to send the Shockers back into a tie with the Bears with one week to play.
    Missouri State held the tie-break over WSU by virtue of sweeping Creighton and the Shockers losing to the Bluejays once, and needed to at least match WSU’s results of the final weekend to earn the No. 2 seed in the MVC Tournament.
    The Bears took care of business by winning at Indiana State and Illinois State, forcing the Shockers to play in the MVC Tournament first round and giving the Bears a bye into the semifinals.
    Wichita got past SIU in its first match, setting up another heartbreaking defeat for the Bears in the semis. As is usually the case when Missouri State and the Shockers get together, the match went five sets with WSU prevailing 15-12 in the fifth. The Bears fell behind early and fought back to an 11-11 tie, but could not get over the hump in yet another stomach-churning five-set defeat.
    The uncertainty about an NCAA at-large bid was confirmed two days later, ending early a season that was so close to being yet another postseason trip for the Bears.

Adjustments to the Record Book
    Cara Hackmann played libero for the first time in her career in the season opener and immediately began an assault on the record book that would end with her holding school records for digs in a season (671) and dig average in a season (5.74 per set). Additionally, those exceptional numbers moved her into the career lead for dig average at 3.95 per set and into third place in career digs with 1,454, a mere 129 shy of the MSU mark.
    Calli Norman, meanwhile, spent the season at the net attacking with remarkable efficiency, hitting .364 for the year to finish behind Linette White’s senior campaign for the second best figure at Missouri State. She also jumped to third in school history with a .317 hitting percentage through two seasons, and was joined by Kelley Michnowicz on that list, who finished her sophomore season with a .281 career attack efficiency to ranked eighth.
    Sara Staubach concluded her career ranked 14th in MSU history with 1,036 kills and eighth with 3,219 attacks.

Plenty of Awards to go Around
    There was no shortage of individual awards handed out to the volleyball Bears in 2009, with Hackmann hauling in the biggest loot. A first-team all-MVC pick, Hackmann was the league’s Defensive Player and Libero of the Year, the CVU.com National Libero of the Year, a four-time MVC Defensive Player of the Week, and the MVC Player of the Week and CVU.com National Player of the Week following her record-breaking defensive performance on Oct. 10.
    The hardware wasn’t limited to the court, as the junior was an MVC Scholar-Athlete first team member, two-time conference scholar-athlete of the week and a CoSIDA/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District Second Team choice.
     Calli Norman was also honored several times in 2009, beginning with a repeat spot in the all-MVC First Team as well as AVCA all-Central Region Honorable Mention accolades. She was the MVC Player of the Week on Sept. 8 after sharing co-MVP honors of the Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Invitational, and made the all-tournament team at all four of MSU’s in-season tournaments.
    MSU’s third first-team all-conference pick was Kelley Michnowicz, the MVC Player of the Week Oct. 5.
    Melissa Gmur (MVC Player, Sept. 28) and Bethany Fuller (MVC Defensive Player, Oct. 5), made it five Bears to earn a weekly honor from the league in 2009.
    Gmur was a first-team MVC Scholar-Athlete and Sara Staubach made honorable mention.
    Senior Addie Foley parlayed a solid senior season into a second-team all-conference nod.
    As a team, Missouri State ranked 27th in the NCAA in digs per set (17.03), 50th in blocks per set (2.40), 65th in win percentage (.677), 72nd in hitting percentage (.231), 76th in kills per set (13.3) and 77th in assists per set (12.26).
    Head Coach Melissa Stokes closed the year with a 314-145 record in 14 seasons with the Bears. She is ranked third in MVC history in total victories, third in league wins (181), fifth in overall win percentage (.684) and seventh in MVC win percentage (.718).