Match Notes
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- Thursday's win over Liberty secured WKU's sixth-straight regular season championship while Friday's win marked the 92nd-straight CUSA regular season win and sixth-straight perfect CUSA season.
- After the two matches against Liberty, Kaylee Cox still leads the way for the Hilltoppers with 408 kills to date. Aliva Skidmore is second with 295 while Kenadee Coyle and Izzy Van De Wiele are tied with 248.
- Eight different Hilltoppers--including Head Coach Travis Hudson--earned some sort of CUSA All-Conference accolades.
- WKU is currently ranked seventh in the country in hitting percentage at .303
- Kenadee Coyle is ranked third in the conference in hitting percentage at .357
The Hilltoppers are 46-8 all-time against Florida International. WKU has not lost a match against the Panthers since 2009 and are on a 27-match win streak. WKU is 1-3 all-time against FIU when playing at a neutral site.
SCOUTING THE PANTHERS
- The Panthers enter the CUSA tournament as the 8 seed.
- Offensively, FIU is paced by Jillian Huckaby with 335 kills. Huckaby was also recently named to the CUSA All-Freshmen team.
- Mandi Morioka leads the Panthers on the back row with 518 digs while they're led by Anna Feldkamp with 78 total blocks.
- FIU is currently ranked third in the conference in digs with 1
TRAVIS HUDSON ON UPCOMING CUSA TOURNAMENT
"We're the one seed going in. We've earned the right to, clearly. But we're not the favorite. UTEP hosting on their home court, that's a big-time momentum shift in their direction. We were able to go down there and get a couple during the regular season, but they were far from easy. I think anyone outside of this that looks at it, UTEP's ranked higher than us in the RPI. They've had a heck of a season and are a NCAA tournament worthy team in their own right. Having to go down there and do this on their home court is going to be a heck of a challenge. Starting with our first round opponent, this FIU team, we got out barely alive. We won in five, twice. They're a team that's going to know they can go down there and compete with us. But it is what it is. We've found a way every match and as we've talked before, we'll start our cycle over and prepare for FIU. I love being the first game of the day because there's nothing worse than sitting around all day waiting. Let's get up and play and see where we are and see if we can advance through this. A lot of people feel like we're on a collision course with UTEP in the finals. Again, I think on paper that's probably accurate. We've been fairly dominant in the league but again, Liberty put us to the test. FIU took us to the brink. There's a lot of really good coaches in this league ad capable teams and so I don't think you'll see the whole tournament go by seed. But we won't think in those terms. We won't think about winning the tournament. We'll think about beating FIU and then we'll go through our process and see what we can do in the semis. Just take it day by day. If you start to think too big it gets overwhelming If in the event we play UTEP in the finals, it's going to be bananas down there. The place will be packed, and we'll have a real uphill battle. But that's why we've put the schedule we've put together is to get us prepared for that moment if we get there."
Travis Hudson 11.18 Press Conference
Follow the Hilltoppers on X (@WKUVolleyball) and Instagram (@wku_volleyball) as the team embarks on the CUSA tournament.
