BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - The Western Kentucky University volleyball team extended its Sun Belt Conference winning streak to five games with a 3-0 (25-11, 25-12, 25-9) sweep of Louisiana-Lafayette on Friday night at E.A. Diddle Arena.
WKU (20-6, 9-1) had five players with hitting percentages over .500 and finished the match with a season-high team hitting percentage of .420.
"I think we are a team that is staring to reach potential a little bit," Hudson said. "There are things that we have been capable of all along and with us now having six matches left and still having our own destiny in our hands, we have to come out and treat every match as it is important and tonight we did that."
The Lady Topper volleyball program has reached the 20-win mark in 11 straight seasons, including 12 of the last 13, all under Hudson.
"Tonight was a significant win," Hudson said. "To be honest, with the youth we had this year and the schedule we had in front of us, that was very much a question to me at the beginning of the year and was one of the big goals that I put in front of our team. And so it was fantastic to get that 20th tonight, with still six left on our schedule."
Louisiana-Lafayette (13-11, 3-5) was limited to a -.099 hitting percentage while committing 24 attack errors.
WKU spread out the offense against the Ragin' Cajuns as five different players recorded at least five kills. Sophomore Jordyn Skinner paced the team with seven kills while adding nine digs to lead the defense. Junior Tiffany Elmore and redshirt freshman Paige Wessel each tallied six kills and a hitting percentage over .500. Senior Emily Teegarden finished the night with five kills in seven attempts for a season-high hitting percentage of .714.
Defensively, freshman Ashley Potts recorded eight digs and classmate Melanie Stutsman added six digs. Sophomore libero Sarah Rogers had five digs. Elmore finished the night with five total blocks, including one solo.
WKU led from start to finish in the first set after jumping out to an early lead by scoring six of the first eight points. At 8-5, the Lady Toppers went on a 12-3 run to build its largest lead of the game at 20-7.
Early on in the second set, the Ragin' Cajuns rallied from down 8-3 to close the gap to 9-8. WKU then scored eight of the next 12 points to lead 17-12. The Lady Toppers closed out the set on an 8-0 run.
After taking a 2-1 lead in the third set, WKU never trailed again. With the score 6-4, the Lady Toppers went on a 13-2 run to lead 19-6. WKU tallied three straight points to close out the match, helped by back-to-back kills from Williams.
The Lady Toppers return to action Saturday against Louisiana-Monroe at 5 p.m. at E.A. Diddle Arena.
"We said coming into the weekend that this weekend is going to be about what we do on our side of the net," Hudson said. "Very often in volleyball you will see if a team wins game one and game two comfortably, game three is a really sloppy, lot closer game because you let up focus wise and it was tremendous to see our team finish tonight and that is something we are going to be looking for tomorrow, too."
For complete results and a recap of the action, please visit WKUSports.com. Live stats and streaming video will be available on the site.
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