The Drake University volleyball team begins its second foray through the Missouri Valley Conference schedule with a pair of home matches against Southern Illinois and Evansville at the Knapp Center. The Bulldogs open the home series against SIU on Friday at 7 p.m. followed by a match versus Evansville on Saturday at 7 p.m. Both matches will be broadcast via The Valley on ESPN3.
 
This week's games conclude the season series with the Salukis and Purple Aces as earlier in the season, Drake defeated Evansville, 3-2, and fell at SIU, 3-1.
 
Drake is 12-10 this season and 3-5 in the MVC after defeating Bradley, 3-1, in its last outing. Meanwhile, SIU is 16-7 this season and 7-2 to sit in second place in the MVC standings. Evansville begins its trip to Iowa with a 4-18 overall record and an 0-9 mark in conference action.
 
Junior Odessa Cody (Chicago, Ill.) has been Drake's most efficient hitter as of late with 21 kills on 53 attempts for a .283 hitting percentage last week. In the Bulldogs' win at Bradley, she recorded a career-high 14 kills in four sets on 33 attempts. She has now hit .273 or better in three of the last four games.
 
Junior Kyla Inderski (Urbandale, Iowa) surpassed the 900 career kill and dig mark in the Bulldogs' game at Loyola. She currently has 915 career kills and 929 career digs and needs 49 more kills to rank in the top 10 all-time at Drake. Senior Michelle Thommi (Omaha, Neb.) is also poised to write her name in the Drake record book, again. She currently has 423 digs and needs just 30 more digs for her season to rank in the top-10 for digs in a season at Drake. Each of her last two seasons have also ranked in the top 10 with 455 digs in 2014 and 453 in 2015.
 
Also on defense seven Bulldogs are currently averaging more than 0.5 blocks per set, helping the Bulldogs rank fifth in the MVC with 2.02 blocks per set. Last season, the Bulldogs ranked ninth.
 
For the Salukis, Andrea Estrada needs 11 kills to reach 1,000 for her career and become the 14th Saluki all-time to reach the 1,000 kill-plateau, and the fifth to do so during their junior season. As a team, SIU ranks in the top-25 nationally in several categories. The Salukis rank 13th in team assists with 1,074, are 19th in total team blocks (206.0) and 21st in team kills (1,123).
 
Evansville is playing its third-straight weekend on the road after recording sold performances last week against SIU. The Aces kept pace with the Salukis as Mildrelis Rodrigueznotched 11 kills to lead the way while Cathy Schreiber finished the night with seven. Rodriguez has notched at least eight kills in each of the last six matches for UE and leads the team with an average of 2.89 per set.
 
Following this weekend's matches, the Bulldogs return to the road to face Missouri State and Wichita State.