MACOMB, Ill. - Western Illinois senior Monique Houston recorded 11 kills with a match-leading .286 hitting percentage as the Westerwinds defeated Oakland in three sets (25-21, 25-19, 25-14), Saturday.

The Westerwinds (7-14, 3-5 The Summit League) led in overall team hitting percentage for the entire match and only let up the lead once in the entire match to the Golden Grizzlies (5-16, 2-7 The Summit League).

"Tonight was the first time that we really played with confidence when we earned a small lead," Western Illinois head coach Kym McKay said. "We are seeing the tangible result of an intangible like confidence. Oakland made really hard pushes at the end of games one and two, but we stayed in control. I liked how we came out in game three. We talked about it for a good majority of our talk and we came out strong. I think that a cushion with a team like Oakland is not a cushion at all and that is the same for a lot of the teams that we are trying to separate ourselves from."

Western Illinois' win over Oakland is a bounce back from falling to IPFW 3-0 last night.

"The biggest thing I'm proud of with the players is bouncing back from last night's match," McKay explained. "Last night was once of the worst matches that we played all year and we could have easily made it an excuse to make it a bad weekend, but we didn't. Going into this game, I told them that I was not concerned with how we did last night because I knew that we were going to have players that were going to turn that around and they needed to believe that as well. We are better than that. I give the team credit for believing in themselves and the credit for putting up the perfect pass from the start."

Western came out in the first set with the first point off a kill by Cait Egan. A Western attack error tied the score at 1-1 before the Westerwinds took off to create a point deficit as many as seven at 17-10. Oakland caught up to tie the set at 21-21 before Western rattled off four straight points to win the set.

Oakland came out in the second set to earn the first point and have its only lead of the night at 1-0 off a kill by Amy Golem. The Golden Grizzlies maintained the lead until Western tied the set at 5-5 off a kill by freshman Megan Toczek and continued to the end for a 25-19 win.

The Westerwinds came out of the break with the momentum from the first two sets as they jumped out to an early lead and extended the lead to as many as 11 points at 20-9. Western finished out the set at 25-14 with a team hitting percentage of .207, the highest of the night, while Oakland's percentage fell to the lowest of the night at -.027.

Behind kill-leader Houston, Erin Frick had nine kills and freshmen Egan and Toczek each had six. Setter Sarah Trimpe had 27 assists.

"Once we started seeing Oakland's block we made a few adjustments and a lot of them came from Sarah," McKay said. "The set was tight and she did a good job of adjusting and the hitters did a nice job of respecting the blocking. It was team focus on maintaining our offense when Oakland was strong with the block."

Defensively, leading the back row was Elise Crnjak with 25 digs, which combined with last night's 24 digs for a two-match total of 49 digs, averaging just over eight digs a set. Ellen Miller also put up double-digit digs with 10.

"Elise and the back row played confidently," McKay said. "Ellen didn't let last night affect her; she played an amazing game. It's a very tough thing to do in 24 hours and the team really learned from previous experiences. I was really proud of the mental toughness they showed in this turnaround. I am very excited to see them in the next half of conference play."

The win against Oakland concludes the first round of Summit League play for Western Illinois. The team will now face each Summit League team one more time in a fight for a top-four seed into the conference tournament.

"We have some tough road trips with distance between the teams for matches on Friday and Sunday," McKay explained. "We have to make that a non-factor for us. All those matches are important for us. We need to have a better second round and we are capable of doing that. We've learned that we are a good team when we are focused on the right things. We are going to struggle in the win column when we are not focused because we are right on that line. We have six freshmen and they are doing a phenomenal job. We want to get in the conference tournament on our own merit."

Western Illinois will face non-conference opponent UIC in a 7 p.m. match, October 21, in Western Hall before hitting the road for Summit League matches against IUPUI and Oral Roberts, October 24 and 26 respectively.