Rolla, Mo. – The Missouri S&T Miners are set to take on the Indianapolis Greyhounds in the opening round of the GLVC Volleyball tournament on Friday at 12 p.m. at the Eastside Centre in East Peoria, Ill. The Miners, received the second seed from the West Division, while the Greyhounds earned the third seed in the East Division.
S&T (22-10, 13-5 GLVC) bounced back from a sweep at Drury last Tuesday with back-to-back five set wins at Missouri-St. Louis and Maryville this past weekend to secure second place in the division. The 22 wins for the Miners are the second most in school history trailing only the 2011's team total of 24 victories.
Friday's contest is a rematch from late in September which S&T won 3-1 in Rolla. The Miners took the first two sets by scores of 25-22 and 25-23 before the 'Hounds won set three 26-24. In the fourth set, S&T had a hitting percentage of .343 and used a 10-4 run to pull away for the 25-15 win.
In that contest
Gracey Moon (Kirkwood, Mo./Kirkwood) and
Carlie Combs (O'Fallon, Mo./St. Dominic) led the Miners with 13 kills while
Krista Haslag (Linn, Mo./Helias ) added 12 kills. Sarah Skinner and Becca Lira paced the UIndy attack with 14 and 12 kills respectively.
Combs leads the S&T offense with an average of 3.10 kills/set while Haslag is averaging 2.98 per set and Moon is averaging 2.3 per set. As a team the Miners are averaging 12.83 kills/set and have an attack percentage of .201.
Alexis White (Auburn, Wash./Riverside) runs the offense dishing out an average of 9.72 assists per set. On the defensive side of the ball S&T is averaging 2.31 blocks per set which is second in the conference behind Rockhurst and are averaging over 17.5 digs/set. Haslag leads the team and is ranked second in the conference with 1.32 blocks per set and leads the conference in total blocks with 160.
Jackie Pyles (White Lake, Mich./West Bloomfield) leads the team and is second in the conference with 5.38 digs per set and has dug up 656 total attacks.
Indianapolis heads into Friday's contest having won six of its last eight matches to qualify for the conference tournament. The 'Hounds (15-16, 11-7 GLVC) won two of its three matches last weekend sweeping Saint Joseph's and Wisconsin-Parkside and were swept by Lewis.
As a team UIndy is averaging 12.72 kills per set and is led by Lira with 3.41 per set. Kacee Salyers is averaging 2.33 per set while Kate Bontrager is knocking down 2.11 per set. Natalie Wichern and Maggie Gibson are the primary setters with each averaging over 10 assists per set. Defensively the 'Hounds are averaging 2.00 blocks and 15.41 digs per set. Shelby Ruffner leads the team with 0.96 blocks per set while Hailey Brown has dug up 393 attacks for an average of 3.54 digs/set.
The winner of Friday's match will take on the winner of the McKendree-Southern Indiana match in the semifinals on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.
