By MATT DASILVA
The University of Northern Iowa’s McLeod Center in Cedar Falls has a sort of bandbox quality. Three thousand fans can sound like 10,000.
But the University of Missouri women’s volleyball players did not let the noise rattle them. Their five-set victory (25-19, 17-25, 26-24, 26-28, 15-10) over host Northern Iowa last week in the first round of the 64-team national tournament was the event’s biggest upset — an unseeded team beating a No. 5 — since the N.C.A.A. started seeding a portion of the field in 2000.
“Epic,” Missouri’s head coach, Wayne Kreklow, called it in a telephone interview. “It was so loud you could hardly hear yourself.”
Less than 24 hours later, the Tigers survived a scare to defeat unseeded Northwestern in four sets. “I compare it to coming off the sugar high and all of a sudden, you crash,” he said. “But we caught our second wind.”
With that victory, the Tigers advanced to Friday’s regional semifinals at Penn State, where they will face 12th-seeded Duke.
Underdogs again. It is a familiar, if not preferred, role for Team Kreklow. That is what the volleyball community calls Kreklow and his wife, Susan, who arrived in 2000 to take over a program that had drifted to the bottom of the Big 12. They came from across town, where as co-head coaches they had led Columbia College to N.A.I.A. championships in 1998 and 1999.
The husband-wife tandem wasted no time turning around the Tigers, who as recently as 1996 were 0-28. Under the Kreklows, Missouri posted three straight 20-win seasons (2000, 2001 and 2002) for the first time since the 1980s.
Their titles have changed over time. Susan Kreklow started as the head coach, with Wayne serving as associate head coach. They swapped positions in 2005 for more flexibility to raise their three children, the oldest of whom, Rick, is a freshman on the Missouri basketball team.
That 2005 season was the last time Missouri advanced this far. The Tigers fell just short of the national semifinals, losing to Tennessee in a regional final.
“I don’t think we really planned it,” Wayne Kreklow said of coaching with his wife. “It just kind of fell together.”
In 2007, Susan moved behind the scenes to become director of volleyball operations, which was difficult for her because it limited her courtside role. Otherwise, she said, the title changes are semantics.
“We do what we do,” she said. “Titles change to fit the role. Part of the reason it does work is because we work together. Coaching a Division I program has a lot of time demands. It’s not really a job. It’s a lifestyle.”
Wayne, a basketball all-American at Drake who won an N.B.A. title as a reserve for the Boston Celtics in 1980-81, met Susan when they played on the Midwest postcollegiate club volleyball circuit. Both were high school coaches and teachers at the time.
“They’re my parents away from home,” said Catie Wilson, a senior middle blocker. “They know how to win and how to coach us in a positive way. Wayne will be sitting there in a timeout telling us whatever we’ve got to do to win the game, and Susan will be there tapping him on the shoulder telling him, ‘You’ve got five seconds to get these girls back on the court.’ ”
The Kreklow family dynamic has evolved this season with the addition of the freshman setter Molly Kreklow, their niece, who graduated from high school early and enrolled at Missouri last January in part to try to preempt any misgivings upperclassmen might have because of her last name. Kreklow, from Delano, Minn., arrived on campus as the nation’s 20th-ranked recruit.
“One of the first things I thought about was I really have to establish a relationship with everybody and prove myself as a good player,” she said. “Give them anything to doubt, and they’re going to take that opportunity.”
Setters play the most visible role on the court. They control the tempo of the offense, and they determine which player will attack the ball or try to catch the opposing defense off guard with a dump for the kill.
With Kreklow setting, the Tigers have become more aggressive and efficient on offense, traits they lacked when they missed the N.C.A.A. tournament the last two seasons.
A dislocated right pinkie forced Kreklow to block with one hand and to serve underhand at the beginning of this season. The injury broke skin and required surgical insertion of a titanium pin, procedures she underwent with her aunt at her side.
“But I would have been there with any player,” Susan Kreklow said. “That’s part of what we do.”
Molly Kreklow’s setting has not suffered. She leads Missouri with 12 double-doubles in 32 matches and ranked second in the Big 12 in assists per set despite also playing with a stress fracture in her right foot that may require surgery after the season.
The outside hitter Julianna Klein, a fifth-year senior who had decisive kills in the third and fifth games of the upset of Northern Iowa, said that Kreklow stepped right in. “It was just seamless, her transition into our team,” Klein said. “It helps that Molly has been distributing the ball well among hitters. We’re all pretty happy.”
It also helped that Kreklow knew the coaches. But she tries to keep family matters separate.
“My roommate is a girl on the team,” Kreklow said. “I said, ‘Yeah, my uncle said. ...’ And she said, ‘You have an uncle that lives in Missouri?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, Wayne.’ It’s something I’ve tried to be careful with so people don’t get put off.”
Kreklow’s forthright approach on and off the court might be the best indicator that she is, well, a Kreklow. Her approach is similar to the one Wayne Kreklow said he took when he and his wife entered what he called the dog-eat-dog world of major college athletics and again as they have seen top-level programs invest more substantially in their sport.
“It was an opportunity to see if you could be successful at a really high level while still trying to operate with some character,” he said. “I wanted to prove you could be successful, still be a good person and account for people in the program — and maybe not be the cutthroat, win-at-all-costs kind of person that seems to be more and more prevalent as the money increases.”
By MIKE DeARMOND
The Kansas City Star
COLUMBIA | Barely had Missouri confirmed its acceptance to play Iowa in the 2010 Insight Bowl than the story lines began to pop up.
How long it had been since these two schools from bordering states had played.
And why.
How the Insight skipped over Nebraska to take the Tigers.
How it was now incumbent on Missouri fans to prove, not only to the Insight bowl but to all future bowls, they would travel in big numbers to support their football program.
With surprising bluntness, Missouri coach Gary Pinkel explained why, when he began the reclamation project of MU football a decade ago, he and Missouri athletic director Mike Alden dropped a four-year series against Iowa set for 2005 through 2008.
“We got ‘em off the schedule because they’re good,” Pinkel said. “We were building our program and that didn’t make a lot of sense to me to play such a great football program.
“I would say that was an intelligent decision.”
Missouri has averaged 10 victories a season over the last four years and now will be playing in a sixth straight bowl game, a school record.
But when the 10-2 Tigers meet the 7-5 Hawkeyes at 9 p.m. on Dec. 28 in Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., it will be the first meeting between the double black and gold in 100 years.
In 1910, Missouri edged Iowa 5-0, in Columbia, boosting the Tigers’ edge to 7-5 in a series that was about to pull a Rip Van Winkle.
MU wide receiver T.J. Moe spoke with just as much boldness on how Missouri, after being passed over by the Insight last season for Iowa State, was taken by the Insight over Nebraska.
“I know a lot of times we’ve been snubbed in the bowls a little bit,” Moe said.
“I know right now, Nebraska has one more loss on their record (9-3) than Missouri does. That’s good for us.
“You’ve got 10 wins in a season, I don’t think you’re too worried about what bowl you’re going to after that. You either get screwed or you don’t. It’s not up to us any more.
“I don’t know if anybody got screwed.”
Nebraska fans, Moe was told, might disagree, with the Cornhuskers going to the Holiday Bowl to play Washington.
“Nebraska always thinks they got screwed,” Moe shot back.
The bottom line was delineated clearly by Pinkel and other MU officials.
Missouri has 11,000 tickets to sell to the Insight Bowl. An estimated 3,500 had been sold by early Sunday evening.
Following the 2007 season, Cotton Bowl officials credited Missouri fans with buying 35,000 tickets to that bowl in Dallas.
However, MU officials estimated the school sold only about 6,500 tickets to the 2008 Alamo Bowl and the 2009 Texas Bowl.
So Pinkel put it bluntly:
“We need our fans there,” he said. “It’s our job to consistently go to bowls and we’re doing it now.
“Mizzou fans, (I) challenge you.”
The MU Athletic ticket office began taking orders for the bowl game on Sunday evening at 7:30. Fans may order tickets by calling 1-800-CAT-PAWS or on the Internet at www.mutigers.com, or starting today at 8 a.m., by showing up in person at the Mizzou Arena ticket office.
Tickets through the MU web site on Sunday listed for $64 and $82, and there was an option to purchase and donate tickets for others at the web site.
The MU Alumni Association is offering full air/land and land/only tour packages to the bowl game. Information for that is at www.MizzouSportsTravel.com or by calling 1-888-649-9681.
Tickets and other information are also available at www.fiestabowl.org. The same organization runs the Fiesta Bowl and the Insight Bowl.
Pinkel said he didn’t harbor any ill feelings about Missouri being bypassed by the Insight Bowl last year, when bowl officials cited a real need to have a home team that promised to buy a ton of tickets for a bowl that was only on the NFL Network.
“Everybody’s got to make decisions for the reasons that are necessary for their organization,” Pinkel said Sunday night.
Pinkel got off the best line of the night when he talked about Iowa vs. Missouri not becoming a rivalry like Kansas vs. Missouri or even Illinois vs. Missouri.
Eight states share a common border with the state of Missouri.
“If we’ve got a natural rivalry with every one of them,” Pinkel said, “we’d have our own conference.”
Senior captain and cornerback Kevin Rutland, on hand at the MU bowl announcement, shook his head over his head coach’s words about not playing Iowa.
“To hear him say Iowa’s a great team, that’s why he dodged them, it takes a man to say something like that,” Rutland said.
“We’re playing them now. There’s no dodge.”
From The Columbia Missourian
BY AMY BACKES
After battling through an intense back-and-forth match against the overall fifth seeded University of Northern Iowa in the first round of the NCAA volleyball tournament, Julianna Klein was overwhelmed with pride.
“From the beginning of this year, from January on, I just feel proud of what we’ve accomplished and everything we’ve worked for,” Klein said in a phone interview. “I’m just so proud of everybody.”
Klein, slamming down the final kill of the hard-fought third set, helped lead the Tigers to a 3-2 victory (25-19, 17-25, 26-24, 26-28, 15-10) over UNI with 12 kills during the match.
“I think they did phenomenal,” coach Wayne Kreklow said of the Tigers in a phone interview. “They were going to need one of the best matches of the year to beat UNI on their home court, and that’s what they did.”
The up and down game saw the Tigers winning the first match, losing the second, winning the third, losing the fourth and finally claiming victory in the fifth. With the win, Missouri claimed the biggest first round upset in the NCAA tournament since 2000, when seeding was introduced.
“During the match, it was an emotional rollercoaster,” Klein said. “It was up and down and everything.”
Klein contributed the team’s ability to remain even-headed to the coaching staff.
“On the sideline, it was all positive talk,” Klein said. “They were telling us we were doing great and to keep going.”
Klein also cited the encouragement of teammate Caitlyn Vann as an immense help, describing Vann as the team’s cheerleader.
Vann, a senior libero, led the Tigers with 35 digs during the match, and freshman setter Molly Kreklow handed out 56 assists. Senior outside hitter Paola Ampudia racked up a team-high 22 kills.
The rest the Tigers have gotten over the past two days while preparing for the match in Cedar Falls, Iowa, was also an important factor in the team’s performance, according to Klein.
With two solid nights of rest under their belts, the Tigers were able to play at their peak. Tomorrow they may not be afforded the luxury of a good night's rest. The match ended at close to eleven o’clock at night, and the team will have practice on Saturday before facing Northwestern (20-12) at 4 p.m. in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
With tonight’s victory, though, the Tigers couldn’t be happier.
“We’re all so excited,” Klein said. “We’re in seventh heaven.”
