BLOOMINGTON - The Illinois Wesleyan volleyball team split a pair of matches in its own Titan Tournament Friday night, opening with a 30-22, 30-27, 30-17 victory over Monmouth before falling to No. 2 nationally ranked Washington (Mo.), 28-30, 30-26, 30-25, 30-26.

IWU (20-11) returns to tournament action at 10 a.m. today against Carthage before facing Wisconsin-Stout at 2 p.m.

The Titans' Melissa Serritella had a team-high 13 kills and Natalie Quinton 10 in the victory over Monmouth (17-12). Jenna Passananti chipped in 45 assists while Quinton had a team-high 17 digs.

"We put a different lineup in there," said IWU coach Kim Nelson-Brown. "Our seniors did really well for us on the outside. Monmouth played great defense against us bringing balls back. We had to work for every point against them."

Against Washington (27-1), Katie Butson provided 23 kills for IWU while Michelle Malinowski and Serritella had 11 each. Passananti added 54 assists while Jaclyn Verticchio notched 19 digs.

"With the exception of game one, we always started in the hole," Brown said. "We were down five, six or seven points and then we started getting in our rhythm. We lost by 13 points and we had 10 receiving errors and five serve receive errors. It's the little things right now separating us from beating a team like Wash U."