Marshall University Athletics
Marshall University
Tulsa
Herd Volleyball Pounds Tulsa, 3-0
10/28/2005 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Oct. 28, 2005
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - The Thundering Herd volleyball team showed why it's in first place Friday night in the Cam Henderson Center as it pounded second-place Tulsa 3-0 (30-20, 30-20, 30-21).
Marshall lived up to its end of the bargain and brought its 'A' game to the one-two showdown as the first-place Herd rolled on both ends of the floor to come away with the victory. With the win, the Herd improves to 18-5 and 10-1 in Conference USA to pull two games ahead of Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane drop to 20-4 overall and 7-3 in C-USA play.
"Tonight was an 'on' night for us," Marshall head coach Mitch Jacobs said. "No doubt that Tulsa has much more to offer and we have to be aware of that if we face them again, but tonight we were really on."
For the match, Marshall outhit Tulsa .321 to .045 and held the Golden Hurricane to just 24 kills all night. The Herd defense was patrolling in force with four players in double figures in digs as Marshall dug out 60 balls compared to just 34 for Tulsa.
Marshall set the tone early with an awesome performance in game one. The Herd hit .441 as a team, highlighted by Kelly-Anne Billingy with 10 kills and a .769 hitting percentage to help propel the Herd on to a 30-20 victory.
The Golden Hurricane defense would tighten up a bit in game two, holding Marshall to a .286 percentage, but the Herd's defense was even stingier, stuffing the Hurricane with a -.023 percentage. Marshall went on to cruise into intermission with another 30-20 win.
In game three, Tulsa was close at 4-3 when setter Julia Silva was given a red-card for arguing with an official. Marshall got a free point as a result and continued to build on its lead. Stephanie Cahill would rifle a ball to the middle of the court to finish things off for the Herd 30-21 in front of an energetic crowd.
On the night, Billingy led all players with 20 kills and a .515 hitting percentage. The sophomore also posted 11 digs for a double-double. Cahill also finished with a double-double, 10 kills and 10 digs. Nickie Sanlin hit .538 on the night with nine kills and she and Amber Sims shut down the Tulsa middles to help the Herd to victory.
Other key contributors in the win were Maggie Arias and Taylor Tanner with 18 and 12 digs respectively. Setter Katie Stein convincingly won the battle of previous C-USA Setters of the Week as she finished with 44 assists, six kills, seven digs and two service aces. Her counterpart, Silva, only had 20 assists, two kills and four digs.
Marshall will be back in action on Sunday against SMU at 1 p.m. in the Cam Henderson Center where it has now won 30 of its last 34.
"This was an exciting win tonight," Jacobs said. "But we're already looking ahead to SMU. They're leading the league in blocking and digging so we've got to turn our full attention to them and be ready for Sunday. We've got to take it one match at a time."
