GO RAMBLERS !!

We are now going for the NCAA Championship---Has a nice ring to it !!

Aside from a Rose Bowl win or two--Has any other ILLINOIS school won an NCAA Championship in anything ???? Maybe but doubtful--We now can win our second !!

WE are coming back on the Sports Map again after so many years !!

GREAT !!!

Great Victory! It sure was wonderful to see the "Joe" rocking tonight. Hope it will be much louder Saturday. As always I am so impressed by Coach Davis and his staff. They really set the tone of staying calm, focused and confident in every match.

Too late for me to stop at Bruno's for a postgamer, unfortunately. That's the only drawback on the night. I was at Gentile for over five hours.

On the plus side... WE WIN!! Gentile was loud as hell.

If we clean up some of the errors we made tonight, we will have a great shot against a very good Stanford team.

Side note: Coach MCCLOWN'S team lost.

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I think Northwestern's won in Lacrosse, SIU has a few gymnastics titles and a 1-AA football title, and Illinois has a few in different sports (Tennis recently)

I would really like to bring a "Where's BYU?" sign to the match on Saturday.

Was driving back to the hotel from the game (too exhausted for a postgame beer, what with with 150 miles driving in brutal traffic, 10 sets of volleyball, chewing my fingernails off, etc.) and Loyola Men's Volleyball was the top story on the WBBM Sports report at 11:45.

Tonight was awesome. If we eliminate the service errors we can beat a sound Stanford team. I will be there again on Saturday... A National Championship would be incredible for the school and everyone on this board.

What an exciting match! Grace loved every minute of it. She got to meet Swella and thought he was a rather interesting fellow but was a bit disappointed that he didn't bring his wit to the game.

Can't wait for tomorrow. Go Ramblers! Beat Cardinal!!

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Grace is a doll and a real trooper who stayed for the entirety of both matches. If I'm not mistaken, I also heard her start a "Chris McClown Sucks" chant.

It was so much fun watching the Ramblers beat Penn State to advance to the (wait for it)... Finals of the NCAA Championship Tournament. Wow! Just typing that phrase is so cool!

This was my first time attending a live game, and my ignorance of the finer points of the sport was manifest. I was lucky to sit between two guys who played or coached volleyball, and I kept peppering them with questions throughout the matches. I now consider myself an expert, and can toss around terms like "pancake" and "paint brush" with the best of them.

The Stanford-BYU match was a real barn burner. I was rooting for Stanford, and they fought off a couple match points in the 4th set to win in 5. Very impressed by them (and BYU too). Truth be told I thought both teams looked better than Loyola last night.

Loyola came out strong to take the first set rather easily, but nothing came easy after that. They struggled, especially with their serve, and Smalzer in particular seemed to have an off night. But they proved to be a gritty bunch and took the 5th set 15-11, with the crowd standing the entire set. Kudos to Lu Wolf for rallying the crowd by bringing out the Loyola flag to counter the Penn State mascot's flag-waving.

Saturday night should be great.

Go Ramblers!

Here is Loyola's post-game news conference:


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No matter what Shane says, I thought our guys were a little nervous. Penn State has been in the tournament for something like 15 consecutive years, and their experienced showed last night. I thought they used Loyola's aggressiveness on serve as part of a game plan-- thus the 20+ service errors. They let a lot of close serves go long, when they might ordinarily make a return. After set one, they were really packing together on blocks expecting power, but Thomas Jaeschke's high volleyball IQ came through when he changed up on some of the attack approaches. I thought the crowd just sttod on their feet and WILLED Loyola across the finish line in the fifth set.

Obviously, Ramblers will have to cut down on errors if they want to hang with Stanford, let alone get the victory on Saturday. Stanford's roster is filled with experienced seniors-- All-American Brian Cook has tremendous floor leadership (you saw him keeping everyone on the same page against BYU last night when they could have folded), plus Steven Irvin, Eric Mochalski, Scott Sakaida, and Delgado (redshirt junior).

P.S. Somebody else start a new thread for the National Championship Final... getting embarrassed of my username starting threads in this section of the forum.