Southern Miss
UAB
Southern Miss Volleyball Team Sweeps Past UAB, 3-0
10/4/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Oct. 4, 2009
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Sophomores Caitlin Clarke and Lauren Sears combined for 24 kills and hit .353 to lead the Southern Miss volleyball team to a 3-0 victory over UAB Sunday afternoon at Reed Green Coliseum. With the win, Southern Miss (16-3) improved to 4-1 in Conference USA play, while UAB fell to 3-2 in the conference.
Clarke finished with a match-high 15 kills, while Sears added nine kills with an attack percentage of .615. Maia Ivanova tallied 20 digs with Ashley Mell adding 14. Kelsea Seymore recorded 42 assists.
"Kelsea had a great match today," Coach Ricci Luyties said. "She did a good job of distributing the ball to the players who were playing well. Overall I was happy with our play because we have been very good at adjusting to what teams were doing and we did that today. After the first part of the match, we started to pass well and that is why we struggled early. Once we started passing well, our offense started to run a lot smoother."
UAB opened the first set jumping out to a 7-3 lead. The Golden Eagles, then, used an 8-2 run to take their first lead of the set, 11-9. UAB answered with four straight points to regain the lead at 13-11. Ten ties occurred during the set with the last at 21-21, before three UAB miscues led to Southern Miss taking the set, 25-22.
The Golden Eagles roared out to a 4-1 lead to start the second set. UAB knotted the score at 5-5 courtesy of three Southern Miss errors. From there, the teams battled back-and-forth before the Golden Eagles were able to ease out to a three-point lead on two occasions with the last coming at 14-11. Southern Miss then closed out the set using an 11-4 run for a 25-16 win.
Both teams traded three side outs apiece to start the third set out of the 10-minute intermission. UAB got a Sam Serley kill to go with a Southern Miss attack error to go up 5-3 before the Golden Eagles battled back to regain the lead of the set on a 4-0 run to put the Eagles up, 7-5. UAB got a kill from Savannah Pegg to cut the lead to 7-6. USM pushed its lead to 10-6 aided by back-to-back Clarke kills. From there, Southern Miss was able to maintain the four-point advantage down the stretch until UAB answered with five consecutive points to get within 19-18. Following a Southern Miss timeout, the Eagles were able to regroup and close out the match on a 6-3, which sealed the 25-21 third-set win.
Andrea Lalic posted a team-high 11 kills for UAB and Jordan McDonald and Heather Thomas totaled 13 digs each.
Southern Miss travels to New Orleans, Oct. 7 to face Tulane at 7 p.m., before heading to UTEP, Oct. 11.
