Rockets travel to Wisconsin tourney after 1-2 showing at the Bama Bash

The Rockets look to rebound this weekend at the Marquette/UW-Milwaukee Invitational after dropping two of three matches at the Bama Bash Tournament. Toledo fell to both host Alabama (25-20, 25-17, 25-23) and UAB (25-21, 25-23, 25-23) in straight sets. Their lone win came in their last match against Furman after losing the first set of the match (17-25, 25-13, 25-20, 25-18).

"We have to get back to playing hard the whole time and being mentally tough," Toledo head coach Greg Smith said. "If you look at the scores against Alabama, one game was 25-17, but the other two were close. Looking at the UAB game, all those scores were really close but we just couldn't pull the match out. We just kept talking about keeping each other accountable to play on a high level. We kept talking about being consistent and playing at a high level, and we have been working on that all week."

Despite the losing record, UT saw a bright spot in junior captain Amber DeWeerdt and freshman Becca Reidy leading the Toledo offense.

DeWeerdt tallied a season high 22 kills against Furman and set a career best in attack percentage (.519) against Alabama. The 5'11 junior from Plainfield, Ill. was named to the All-Tournament Team.

"We want our players playing at a high level no matter what, if they're a freshman or a senior it doesn't matter," Smith said. "With Amber, we are trying really hard to get her to play consistent. For two matches, she played at a high level and I told our team that if you did it once then you could do it again if you're mentally strong enough to do it. She has to play that way all the time. We have to know that she is going to play at that level. With her being our junior captain, she can do it."

Reidy led the UT offense against UAB, tallying 11 kills and finishing with a .500 kill percentage.

"Becca had a pretty good weekend, but we really need to get her going strong again," Smith said. "Coming into this, she had a really strong two weeks of practice and she kind of leveled off then she came back again this weekend. To have Becca turn it around has helped."

This weekend the Rockets will travel to Milwaukee, Wisc. to face Creighton tomorrow at 7 p.m. before battling UW-Milwaukee and Wisconsin on Saturday and Marquette on Sunday.

"We have to get back to what made us successful the first weekend," Smith said. "Getting back to the basics and competing again hard. That's what we are trying to get back to because the four teams that we are facing this weekend, we cannot take a breather at all. I am excited to get back to playing our game and playing good defense and getting back our mentality. If we can do that for four matches, then let's do it for a fifth against Michigan State, and hopefully that will get us into a good mind frame for conference play."