NEW ORLEANS, La. – The New Orleans Privateer Volleyball team opens up their Southland Conference home slate beginning with Oral Roberts Thursday night.
This will be the first time that UNO (2-12, 0-2 Southland) will meet Oral Roberts, and the Privateers will also host Southland rival Central Arkansas (10-3, 2-0 SLC) this Saturday. ORU and UCA sit at second and third place in the conference standings respectively.
This will be a tough set of games for UNO, but the Privateers will have the home crowd on their side that will get a firsthand look at Southland Conference play.
Sophomore
Lauren Levy remains a defensive bright spot for the Privateers as she leads the way with 155 digs, which is good for a team high 3.37 digs per set average. Senior
Marti Richmiller also leads the team with 81 kills on the season.
Sophomore
Celeste Ramirez and senior
Ariane Labrzycki continue to lead the offense at the net. Ramirez averages 4.34 assists per set with a team high 191 total assists, while Labrzycki averages 3.75 assists per game and has totaled 120.
ORU (10-2, 2-0 SLC) features a dominant team that is near the top of just about every category in the SLC. The Golden Eagles lead the conference in kills per set at 14.2. Junior Sara Pope leads that category for ORU with 3.76 kills per set. The team also leads the conference in hitting percentage.
Defensively for the Golden Eagles, senior Bruna Silva has a team high 4.9 digs per set and is also a solid server with a .876 percentage this season.
UCA (10-3, 2-0 SLC) will pay a visit to UNO's Southland and in-state rival Southeastern this Thursday before heading to New Orleans this weekend. Senior Marissa Collins is the SLC's leader in assists per game with 11.7. Collins has 503 total assists, which is second in the conference. UCA is second in four team categories in the SLC, including hitting percentage, assists per set, kills per set, and service aces per set.
Sophomore Heather Schnars has a team high 43 service aces for the Sugar Bears and also leads in kills per set with 3.16 so far this season.
Thursday night's match with Oral Roberts gets underway at 7 p.m., while Saturday's tilt with Central Arkansas begins at 2 p.m. Both contests will be inside the Human Performance Center.
