Lauren Carlini has the Wisconsin Badgers surging.
The senior is keying the team towards a national title run, and came up big in a pair of conference wins last week. Traveling to Ohio State on Wednesday set up what could have been a trap game for the Badgers, as the Buckeyes had already knocked off #1-ranked Nebraska earlier in the season. But Carlini was a steadying force for the Badgers and helped Wisconsin take care of business in calculation fashion.
Her 37 assists led all players by 12 or more, and she had a match-high 11 digs. That led to a clean sweep for the Badgers: a 3-0 win. The only real tension came in the second set, where Carlini’s crew was pushed to a 26-24 win. The other sets were 25-19 and 15-22.
Just a few days later, Wisconsin was home against Purdue, a team that gave the Badgers fits in their first meeting. Like the first matchup, this one spanned the full five sets in back-and-forth fashion. But again, Carlini led the charge, notching 57 assists to engineer a resilient win. The Badgers were outblocked and outdug and dropped two sets after rolling to a 2-0 lead. But Carlini’s steady presence (and 12 digs) built a comfortable lead in the fifth that wound up a 15-10 win for the home team.
The fallout: the 20-3 Wisconsin Badgers leapfrogged Nebraska in the RPI rankings as the new #1 team in the nation, though Nebraska is still favored in the AVCA polls. On top of that, the Big Ten as a whole rose in the RPI, passing up the Pac-12 for the title of ‘toughest conference nationwide’.
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