Ignore Erin Bruce’s right pinkie, which Dundee-Crown’s 6-foot sophomore says sticks out ever since she broke it playing volleyball in early summer.

She tapes the little finger for matches so she won’t re-injure it.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Bruce said. “It’s just crooked.”

As Bruce’s pinkie has improved, coincidentally, so has her topspin jump serve, which is becoming another weapon in her arsenal to complement her powerful right arm.

Thursday night, Bruce put up – to borrow a baseball term – a crooked number. Her three aces, all during a 13-point serving run in the opening set, jumpstarted Dundee-Crown to a 25-8, 25-18 win over visiting Jacobs in a Fox Valley Conference match.

Besides her pinkie, Bruce’s five kills and 15 digs also stuck out.

Fellow sophomores Tori Brents and Kate Grahman also had strong matches for D-C. Brents had three aces, 10 assists and two blocks, while Graham matched Bruce with five kills.

It was the third win this week for D-C (11-16, 6-10), which bettered last season’s win total by beating Jacobs (15-18, 6-10) for the second time this season.

“It’s been a process, and they have just been getting better every single week,” said coach Patty Langanis, who took over D-C’s program this year after winning 742 matches and a state championship in 30 seasons at Cary-Grove. “Everybody has been depending and relying on each other in positive ways.”

Jacobs coach Mike Depa sees an improved Chargers team.

“They’re playing really well,” Depa said. “When we played them the first time, we made a lot of errors, but watching and seeing them [tonight], their outsides were swinging really hard, and they put up a really good block. We were swinging. But all of their touches were going up, and our touches a lot of times were going right to the ground.”

Bruce went to the serving line in the first set with D-C up 12-8 after Brents’ no-look, two-handed flick at the net found the floor on Jacobs’ side. Bruce then fired off back-to-back aces with top-spin rockets.

“It’s really going to accelerate my game,” Bruce said of the jump serves. “It’s a very high-risk, high-reward serve, so it’s definitely going to be different, but it’s fun.”

Funny, Bruce learned jump-serving only recently. Langanis taught her at tryouts in August.

There have been growing pains.

“It’s taken a while for it to get to the point where it is now,” Bruce said. “There have been some games where I missed almost every one. It was just so frustrating, but just getting through those moments has really helped me.”

At the start of camp, Langanis and her staff had every player work on jump-spin serving. They then selected two “spinners” who they wanted to execute the serve in matches.

They chose Bruce and Brents.

“Once we picked Erin and Tori, we said, ‘No matter how many you miss, you’re not quitting,’ ” Langanis said. “They’re both sophomores, so you’d think by the time they’re seniors, they’re going to be ripping.”

Bruce’s top-spin serves in the first set prevented Jacobs from running its offense, while pumping up the Chargers and their fans.

“We’ve taken our bumps and bruises with our jump spin [serves] most of the season,” Langanis said. “I’m sure parents have been in the stands wondering, ‘Why are they doing that? They’re missing so much.’ But you do it because in the long term you’re hoping that you can find a lot of easy points. We found some tonight, for sure.”

Jacobs, which lost its third match in a row, played a more competitive second set but never led. The Eagles got to within 22-18 on a kill by Gracyn Sanders, before D-C closed out the win with three kills, including two by Graham.

Rachelle Zieba had six kills and two aces for Jacobs, while Maddie Mitchell added three kills and two blocks. Gianna Coletti tallied six assists and five digs. Sanders had three blocks, as well, and Layla Merlin had three kills and nine digs.

“After that jump-serve got us a couple of times in that first set, I feel like we picked up our serve-receive a lot better and our passing was much more on,” Depa said. “We just weren’t finding the court, and we got a little not so aggressive in tipping a little bit too much.”