ROCHELLE — After suffering four consecutive losses during the Sterling Invitational this past Saturday, the Lady Hubs varsity volleyball team tweaked its lineup in order to generate some positive momentum heading into Monday’s match against Ottawa Marquette and Tuesday’s conference crossover with DeKalb.

Rochelle played without seniors Morgan Knight (injury) and Jacie Wyatt (absent) over the weekend, but Wyatt returned to help the Lady Hubs take on Marquette, leading the team with four kills and five digs. Juniors Sarah Craven and Emma Mehrings each totaled four digs, but Rochelle was unable to break out of its funk, falling 20-25, 15-25 to the Lady Crusaders.

“When you lose a senior middle in practice the week before, and your senior setter is gone, you’re forced to try some different lineups,” head coach John Pfaff said. “We got Jacie back on Monday and we went with a lineup we’ve been using over the last 3-4 weeks, and even though the scores were kind of close, it was the same result… The coaches and I put our heads together and we told each other that we have to try something different.”

With Knight sidelined on Monday, senior middle hitter Alexis Crawford stepped up for the Lady Hubs, and Crawford received praise from Pfaff for her performance in the first set of the match at Marquette. Pfaff also recognized senior Kendra DeLaTorre as well as Craven, Mehrings and junior Grace Orlikowski for their all-around efforts on Monday.

“She had a couple kills and a couple of blocks,” Pfaff said. “She really controlled the middle and that opened things up for our outsides. All of our back row girls played really well… They all passed really well. We passed, defended and blocked really well in the first set, but things fell apart for us in the second set and there wasn’t much that stuck out.”

Monday’s loss was Rochelle’s 11^th over its last 12 matches, and as the Lady Hubs prepared for Tuesday’s crossover with DeKalb, Pfaff and his coaching staff stuck with the changes they made against Marquette, which included moving Wyatt from setter to middle hitter and creating more opportunities for sophomores Katie Van Hise, Maggie Duval and freshman Clare Green. The score of Tuesday’s match was exactly the same, however, with Rochelle falling to the Barbs 20-25, 15-25.

“We’re not just trying different things all of the time,” Pfaff said. “We’re going with this for a while and we’ll see how it’s going to work… DeKalb’s a higher caliber team than Marquette, but we played so much better than we did on Monday despite the rough patch at the beginning of the second set.”

The Lady Hubs fell down 8-1 to start the second set, but Rochelle rallied back behind strong performances from Mehrings and Crawford, who combined for eight kills in the match. Green and Duval found rhythm setting balls as well, with the two underclassmen each totaling six assists. Rochelle (6-16-2) will play Ottawa on the road Thursday evening.

“I thought our setters handled themselves well,” Pfaff said. “They put up a lot of hittable balls… Clare and Maggie did a good job of getting the ball into the right spots… I thought we played with more intensity and control, but DeKalb had some really tough servers so I think that exposed us a little bit.”