NEW ORLEANS - Attempting to win both ends of a home-and-home series
against Arkansas State for the first time since 1987, the University of
New Orleans volleyball team came up on the short end of a 3-0 (25-23,
25-23, 25-21) Red Wolves win at the Human Performance Center on
Thursday night.
ASU (16-6, 5-3 SBC) received a match-high 16 kills from Cayla Fielder
in becoming the first team to get a win on the Privateers home floor
this season. Laura Bennett had 35 assists for the Red Wolves while Erin
Neeley had 12 digs on the defensive end for the visitors from Arkansas.
UNO (11-7, 4-3 SBC) was led by
Lindsey Loyd and
Dobrilla Kovacevic who
had a matching 11 kills.
Jaci Bayley had 18 assists while
Nicky Valenti
held down the back row with a match-high 21 digs. The Privateers had a
season-high 10 blocks in the match led by
Kaley Hubbard who had a hand
in four.
Privateers and Red Wolves were knotted at 10 apiece before UNO reeled
off 5 of 7 points getting a huge boost on the defensive side of the
court from Valenti who had eight digs in the frame at that point
forcing the ASU head coach Craig Cummings to call a timeout.
The Red Wolves bounced back scoring four straight points out of the
timeout to take the lead as Privateer head coach
Jozsef Forman called a
timeout of his own. ASU would keep the run going scoring one more point
before UNO finally stopped the streak after five straight points for
the visitors.
The momentum carried over from the run as the Red Wolves closed out the
stanza winning 3 of 4 points following a tie at 22 to win frame, 25-23.
Looking to even up the set score at one, the Privateers jumped out to a
3-0 lead to start the second frame. ASU got back into the set and took
the lead for a majority of the frame, which saw 10 ties. The last tie
coming at 23 all before the visiting Red Wolves scored the final two
points to win 25-23 and take a 2-0 lead into the break.
ASU broke open a 2-2 game with 7 of 9 points to take a five-point lead
at 9-4. After a UNO timeout, the Privateers scored three straight
points to cut the lead to two.
The Red Wolf defense continued to contain the Privateers' high powered
offense to build a lead of five on several occasions, enough breathing
room to avoid a late UNO rally that brought the lead down to two before
ASU closed the match after a Privateer error.
UALR comes to the HPC on Friday night for a 7 p.m contest as UNO wraps
up their their SBC homestand. The Privateers fell to UALR in five sets
in September in Little Rock, Ark. The match will streamed exclusively
on UNO Vision located on the UNOPrivateers.com web site.
