Bounce back game. Time to regain confidence and momentum heading into the conference tournament next week.

Rice out to a quick 8 - 3 lead in first set. Nicole already with 4 kills.

12 - 5

16 - 7

21 - 11

Dominant 25 - 15 first set victory-- from start to finish. Nicole with 8 kills and no attack errors (.667 hit%). Rice with 15 kills, 6 blocks and only 4 attack errors (plus 2 service errors).

No let up in 2nd set-- Lady Owls out to a quick 6 - 1 lead. Nicole up to 10 kills, 4 digs and a block.

13 - 3

BTW, UTSA is not a bad squad. 15-10 overall, 8-4 in CUSA.

UTSA just took their final TO of 2nd set.

Equally dominant 2nd set victory: 25 - 16 (with UTSA scoring 4 of the final 5 points to close the gap a wee bit).

Not quite as efficient as the first set (we increased to 4 attack errors), but I like that we already have 11 blocks. Blocking had been a weakness for much of the season.

Nicole relatively quiet 2nd set, and she sat the final 5 minutes, but she still has 11 kills, with no attack errors, and 5 digs. Anota has 4 kills and 4 blocks.

Somewhat OT but the remainder of Penn volleyball's season is canceled. Matches vs Penn will not count for conference. There is no conference tournament, so winner of regular season goes to NCAA. Yale trails Princeton by 1 game with 2 left and they play each other in the season finale.

Quote:According to a Penn Athletics statement, the decision to cancel the remainder of the season was made following the administration's discovery of "vulgar, offensive, and disrespectful posters" in the team's locker room.

https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/11/pe...19-posters

Same song, different stanza-- Lady Owls jump out to quick 6-1 lead in 3rd set.

10 - 4

14 - 8 Nicole with her first attempted attack since early in the 2nd set.

17 - 9

20 - 13

25 - 17 SWEEP.

Anota and Nicole combine for 22 kills and no attack errors. Lee Ann with 13 digs, Nicole with 9 digs. Martinez and Graham with 19 and 17 assists, respectively.

That's one way to way away the bitter taste from Sunday's heartbreaking defeat. Let's repeat on Saturday and enter the tournament back on a roll.

WKU sweeps LA Tech (25-16, 25-19, 25-21).

We know we're the 2 seed at next week's CUSA tournament (although we can still tie for the regular season title with a win Saturday and WKU loss). We may end up playing UTEP in the 1st round of the tournament, so it might be back-to-back matches against them. But it's also possible we could play Charlotte or MTSU (who are currently tied for 8th n the league 1 game behind UTEP). Charlotte plays FAU and MTSU plays FIU, so based on current standings alone, it seems more likely that UTEP will be the 7 seed and MTSU the 8 seed, if everything plays out to form.

With a dominant win tomorrow in our regular season finale we could move up to #20 since #20 Cal was just swept at home by UCLA.

It's going to be very tough for the NCAA committee this year with regional hosts. BYU lost again to USD last night (they were swept by USD in both matches this year) so even though BYU is ranked #10 and USD #24, would it be fair if BYU was awarded a regional and USD wasn't (USD will be that league's regular season champ). Illinois should finally drop out of the top 25 this week (they were swept by Penn State and are .500 on the year and under .500 in Big Ten play). Possibly SFA finally breaks into the top 25, but it wouldn't shock me if UCLA or another power conference team leapfrogs SFA instead.