BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - The Western Kentucky University volleyball team returned to the win column in Sun Belt Conference play with a 3-0 (25-9, 25-10, 25-19) sweep of Troy on Friday night at E.A. Diddle Arena.
WKU (18-2, 5-1 SBC) improves to 15-0 all time against the Trojans and has won 15 of its last 17 matches. The Lady Toppers tallied 44 kills as a team with a .309 hitting percentage.
"I thought we played really, really well early on," WKU coach Travis Hudson said. "Game three, we really made a lot of unforced errors, which I think kept it closer than it needed to be but we continue to defend. We held them to a negative in that third game which allowed us to still sneak away with the win."
Troy (12-7, 2-3) was limited to a -.022 hitting mark while recording 18 kills and committing 20 attack errors.
WKU sophomore Melanie Stutsman led the offense with 11 kills and a team-best .786 hitting mark followed by senior Tiffany Elmore with eight kills and a .467 hitting percentage. Senior Lindsay Williams and junior Jordyn Skinner each tallied seven kills and redshirt freshman Paige Wessel added six kills.
Defensively, Skinner recorded double-digit digs for the 12 match this season, pacing the team with 18 digs. Sophomore Ashley Potts had 11 digs and Stutsman added six digs. The Lady Toppers recorded five team blocks led by Williams with three solo blocks.
"Our floor defense was really good tonight," Hudson said. "Jordyn had 18 digs and was really active. Ashley Potts was really good and we served the ball well and that's always the way you start playing good defense, is with a good, aggressive serve and we did that."
WKU jumped out to a 10-7 lead in the first set and went on to score 15 of the final 17 points to close out the 25-9 win.
In the second set, the Lady Toppers again built an early advantage at 10-5. WKU then used a 15-5 run to take the 2-0 lead with a 25-10 victory. In the first two sets, WKU committed only four attack errors and hit .500 in the first two sets combined.
The third set was the closest of the night, featuring three ties and two lead changes. Down 6-3, the Lady Toppers tallied five straight points to make the score 8-6 and never trailed again. WKU closed out the set on a 5-0 run.
The Lady Toppers close out the weekend against South Alabama at 5 p.m. at E.A. Diddle Arena.
"It is the same story, different day," Hudson said. "We have to continue to defend and we've got to continue to improve on offense. Through two games tonight we were hitting .500 as a team and then in game three we make 11 errors and end up only hitting .309 for the match so the third game was a little disappointing from an offensive standpoint and so we'll continue to look for a complete offensive match."
