Photo by: Justin Edmonds
The women’s volleyball team continues to excel on the road with two wins over the weekend in Alabama. The Pioneers have 11 wins in their last 13 matches.
The Pioneers defeated the University of South Alabama Jaguars 3-1 (30-22, 30-19, 31-33, 30-19) Friday evening, and then had their best defensive match of the season against Troy on Saturday evening, with a 3-1 (28-30, 30-17, 31-29, 30-20) win.
DU (15-9, 9-2 SBC) is having a noteworthy season against their Sun Belt Conference opponents and hopes to win the SBC tournament in mid November, which they are hosting in Hamilton Gymnasium.
The Pioneers have only lost two of their SBC matches against Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky. DU has swept eight of their last 13 opponents and the other three teams they beat 3-1.
During Friday evening’s match against South Alabama, senior Kim Muller had a career-high 24 kills, while Alyssa Hampton, Kerry Porter , Holly Benson and Alyta Baris had double-figure kills.
DU had a total of 76 kills, 67 assists, 72 digs and 11 team blocks throughout the four games compared to South Alabama’s 54 kills, 52 assists, 60 digs and five team blocks. More career-highs were set when senior Baris and sophomore Clare Maxwell hit attack percentages of .667 and .636 respectively.
After losing game one of their match against Troy in Trojan Arena, the Pioneers managed to come from behind and win the next three games.
There were 21 total tie scores and 11 lead changes throughout the four games. The Pioneers played strong defensively with 14.5 total team blocks and had 109 total digs.
More recognition for women’s volleyball is the announcement on Monday that freshman libero Kacie Wikierak has been named the Sun Belt Conference Defensive player of the Week for the week of Oct. 22. Wikierak is the first player in University of Denver’s SBC history to achieve weekly honors more than one week of the season. Wikierak received the same honor for the week of Sept. 10 and Oct. 8.
The University of Denver continues to play SBC opponents on the road this Friday and Saturday against University of Arkansas- Little Rock and Arkansas State. Then the Pioneers finally return home for their last five season games and the Sun Belt Conference tournament.
