Historic season comes to end for Illinois volleyball

Illinois volleyball head coach Don Hardin's career at the helm for the Illini ended Friday as his squad fell to California (22-25, 22-25, 22-25) in NCAA regional play.

After the match, Hardin said the fact he was leading the team for the last time started to really sink in during the final 10 minutes of the third set.

"The commitment to the people and the team and the program and in our close circle in our family of volleyball is something you don't take lightly," Hardin said. "When you come to the end of the road with that, it's really, really challenging and you'll miss that."

No. 8 national seed California's outside hitters proved to be as good as advertised. The No. 9 national seed Illini focused on junior Hana Cutura, holding her to 11 kills and just .111 hitting. But senior Am'ra Solomon stepped up to spark the Golden Bears in her place.

"Her performance was inspirational, she lit it up," Hardin said. "We were really concerned about Cutura and we slowed her down significantly, kept her numbers down, but then Solomon lit it up and really inspired their team.

"Especially what gave us trouble were the two sets up the middle and they gained confidence with that and presented a problem for us that we didn't solve early enough to build our confidence," Hardin said.

Despite facing a triple block through much of the match, sophomore Laura DeBuler provided much of the Fighting Illini offense. The outside hitter tallied 18 kills, but was held to just .208 hitting.

Junior outside hitter Kylie McCulley added 11 kills and hit at a .333 clip. But the Illini collectively hit just .211 as the Golden Bears continued to make adjustments throughout the match.

"I think we scouted them really well and we kind of adjusted wherever they were hitting," Cutura said. "Laura was hitting kind of peak balls, so we shifted to get those deep, cross-court balls and I think we did a really good job doing that."

DeBruler said the match was a chance to improve for the future

"They're a great team. They played really well," DeBruler said. "It's good that we get to play one of the best teams in the NCAA and for me it's a great learning experience heading into next year.

"Throughout the match, we learned a lot of things too, which was good," DeBruler added. "Hopefully some of us who are coming back, we can take this loss and really learn from it next year."

Plenty of this season's squad will return next year, including junior libero Ashley Edinger who set the Illinois record for career digs earlier this season.

"The thing that gives me a good feeling is players like Laura and younger players returning that I know are going to mature," Hardin said. "The bulk of this team has a lot of young leadership and I know they'll do great things in the future."

While plenty of Illini will return, the match marked the end of the road at Illinois for the three seniors as well as Hardin. Setter Lizzie Hardin was especially emotional following the loss.

"I don't have a single ounce of disappointment about that match or regret about the season," Bazzetta said. "This was more than I could have asked for in my senior season. The people on this team are some of my best friends and we've put in a lot of work and so I think it was just the emotion of it being over."

And even though Bazzetta is sad to leave her Illinois volleyball career behind, she knows the Fighting Illini of the future have the potential to go far beyond the round of 16.

"I don't get to put a jersey on again that says Illinois and we worked hard to put a lot of pride into that name and so I think that was the hardest part," Bazzetta said. "I think it was just realizing that everything that I've worked for is over, but I can't imagine where they're going from here."