Marshall University Athletics
Marshall Volleyball to Face MAC-Leading Bobcats on Wednesday
11/4/2003 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Marshall Volleyball to Face MAC-Leading Bobcats on Wednesday
11/4/2003
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. ? The Marshall volleyball team will travel to Athens, Ohio, for a Wednesday night Mid-American Conference matchup with the league-leading and No. 29-ranked Ohio Bobcats at the Convocation Center at 7 p.m.
Ohio (21-3, 11-0 MAC) is on a 19 match win streak, which includes a 3-0 win over the Thundering Herd (16-12, 6-5 MAC) on Sept. 26 at the Gullickson Hall Gymnasium. The Bobcats lead the all-time series with Marshall, 22-11.
Ohio?s Laura Hageman, the 2002 MAC Player of the Year, and setter Briana Adamovsky recorded 12 kills and 38 assists, respectively, in the two team?s first meeting. Hageman added five digs and three blocks to guide her squad to a 30-16, 30-28, 30-23 victory.
Marshall split a pair of weekend league matches in its last action, dropping a five-set heartbreaker to Miami (Ohio) on Friday but quickly rebounding to grab a 3-1 win over visiting Bowling Green on Saturday. MU is 3-4 in its last seven matches.
Marshall head coach Mitch Jacobs is not shying away from the challenge that facing a nationally-ranked team brings.
?Ohio is the 29th-ranked team in the country. How can you not be excited?? Jacobs said. ?Anytime you play the top team in your conference, you have to be pumped up. They (Ohio) are the strongest team in the MAC, they?ve proved that, but you can?t give them a win before we get there.?
Jacobs has liked the type of effort his team has given as of late, but is concerned about the team?s inability to turn that effort into wins.
?We may have played our best four individual games of the season this past weekend (versus Miami and BGSU),? Jacobs said, ?but we can?t seem to put together a complete match.?
The second-year head coach is also expecting to be able to gauge his team?s level of performance on Wednesday.
?This match will give us an indication of where we?re at right now, as compared to the beginning and middle of the season.?
The Herd?s Ashley Barnard (Maumee, Ohio) and Tracey King (Miami, Fla.), both seniors, are nearing career milestones that could be broken on Wednesday. Barnard, a libero, stands at 969 career digs, only 31 shy of 1,000, while Tracey King, an outside hitter, is only eight kills short of the 1,000 mark.
After Wednesday?s match with Ohio, Marshall will play out its final road portion of the 2003 regular season schedule, with a Friday tilt at Eastern Michigan followed by a contest with the Toledo Rockets on Saturday. Both matches begin at 7 p.m.