Marshall University Athletics
Marshall University
UCF
Marshall Volleyball Blanks UCF, 3-0
10/27/2006 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Oct. 27, 2006
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HUNTINGTON - The Marshall Thundering Herd volleyball team defeated the UCF Golden Knights 3-0 (30-23, 30-14, 30-22) in its opening match of the Homecoming weekend at the Cam Henderson Center on Friday and with the victory moved into a tie first place tie in the Conference USA standings.
The Herd (17-9, 9-3 C-USA) took its third sweep of the current four match homestand with another all-around performance against UCF (5-17, 1-10 C-USA) with its second largest crowd of 537 in attendance.
"It was a nice crowd, you know what we need that," Marshall head coach Mitch Jacobs said. "We need people to stay with us. We aren't dominating the league but we play really good volleyball and our opponents are better than they were last year. The league is stronger, it's better matches. We are getting back on a roll going 3-0 in three matches in a row in the league, that's great, we'll take that everyday."
As a team Marshall had its fifth-highest attack percentage of the season as a team with .323. Defensively the Herd was equally impressive with 51 total digs and six team blocks.
"It was a good job tonight," Jacobs said. We defended them well but they showed us a couple of things that were different from the last time we played them. They ran a different offense and ran different players. We were able to withstand the early part of the match trying to figure out what they were doing."
The Herd had five players with nine or more digs in the match, leading them was Maggie Arias with 12. Christin Bimberg and Stephanie Cahill each posted 10 digs on their way to a pair of double-doubles. Also contributing with nine digs each for Marshall was freshman Kristin Marcum and junior Kelly-Anne Billingy.
For the Herd's net defense, Bimberg and Marcum put up two blocks while Chelsea Lazar led all players with four.
"We really did one of our better jobs defensively tonight," Jacobs said.
On the offensive for the Herd, Billingy led all players with 18 kills while Cahill had the match's second-highest total with 14. Setting up the Herd was Bimberg who contributed with 45 assists, three kills and two service aces.
Marshall will conclude its homestand with its next contest at 1 p.m. on Sunday at the Henderson Center against Southern Miss.
