KIRKSVILLE, Mo. - Friday night vs. Missouri S&T, the Truman State University volleyball team defeated the Miners in four sets, clinched the seventh seed for the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament (Nov. 17-19 in East Peoria, Ill.) and earned win No. 200 for head coach,
Ben Briney. Briney became the second coach in program history to reach the mark and is behind just Debbie Masten's 262 victories for first all time.
Truman (17-13, 9-8 GLVC) has now won 10 of its last 12 matches, is a season high four matches above the .500 mark and is above .500 in GLVC play for the first time this year. In fact, the last time the Bulldogs were four above even overall was after the final match of 2015 when they were also 17-13. Missouri S&T (9-21, 2-15 GLVC) has dropped seven of its last eight and will be at William Jewell on Saturday for the season finale.
Friday, the Purple and White were led by a trio of players with at least 10 kills including
Jasmine Brown (12),
Natalie Brimeyer (12, .321 hitting percentage) and
Holly Hildebrand (10, .471).
Savvy Hughes registered 46 digs, topped 40 in that category for the third-consecutive match and ninth time in 2017. Defensively, five Bulldogs came up with double-figure dig efforts including
Lauren Wacker (21), Hughes (16),
Jocelynn Livingston (16),
Sam Yancy (13), and Brown (11). For Brown and Hughes, those two now have 15 and 16 double-doubles this season, respectively. Above the net, Brown was the ringleader with five total blocks.
How it happened...
- In the first set, after S&T scored the first two points, Truman rattled off eight of the next nine to go up by five, 8-3.
- The Miners battled back, though, and eventually went up by two, 16-14, thanks in part to a 5-0 run.
- Once it was 18-16 in favor of the visitors, the Bulldogs scored five of a possible six points and were ahead by two, 21-19.
- After that, the away team pulled within one three times, but never tied it and the hosts held on for a 25-23 set victory.
- The second set was the tightest one of the night as it saw 11 ties and three lead changes, but S&T won it 25-19 to even up the match score.
- In the third, there were three deadlocks through the first 10 points scored, but the Miners used a 5-1 spurt to go up by four, 10-6.
- After a Truman timeout, the Bulldogs proceeded to score the next six points and had the lead, 12-10.
- From there on out, there were no more ties, the deficit was cut to one four times, and was as large as five (17-12 and 25-20).
- The fourth set featured no ties or lead changes and Truman opened it up by scoring five of the first six points.
- After some back and forth play and the Bulldogs led the Miners by three, 9-6, the Purple and White scored the next eight points in a row to go up 11, 17-6.
- The lead was never smaller than seven after that and Truman won the set by 10, 25-15, and the match in four.
Next up, Truman will play at Rockhurst on Saturday for a 3 p.m. start in the 2017 regular-season finale.
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