MADISON, Wis. – The No. 7 Badgers hit .465 in the 25-23, 25-12, 25-13 sweep over No. 3 Penn State on Saturday afternoon, to hand the Nittany Lions its first Big Ten loss of the season.
Wisconsin (18-5, 12-2 B1G) recorded just three errors en route to the .465 hitting percentage, with 50 kills on 101 attempts. Sarah Franklin and Anna Smrek both finished with 13 kills. Julia Orzol added 11 kills to round out double figure kills.
Penn State (23-2, 13-1) hit .117 (36 kills – 22 errors – 120 attempts) with outside Camryn Hannah leading the team with 10 kills.
The Badgers blanked Penn State’s block, as they outblocked PSU 11 to zero. CC Crawford and Smrek both tallied five blocks.
For the second match in a row, freshman Charlie Fuerbringer tallied a double-double, with 38 assists and 12 digs, a match-high.
After a back and forth start, it was all tied up at 7 apiece when the Badgers went on a 4-0 run with three kills from Franklin to give UW an 11-7 lead. Penn State called a timeout to slow down the run. Out of the break they sided out, but Wisconsin extended its lead to 14-8 with back-to-back kills from Smrek. From there, the Nittany Lions got back on track with two aces in a row to force a UW timeout with the Badgers leading 15-12. It was a tight race to 25 points with a tie game at 22-all after Jess Mruzik aced UW. The Badgers scored two straight points to earn set point. Penn State held off one set point before Wisconsin closed it out to take set one 25-23.
It was all Wisconsin in the second set. The Badgers went on a 13-0 scoring run to give the team a 15-2…
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