MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia volleyball team heads out on its final road trip of the season this week, traveling to Norman, Oklahoma, to face the Oklahoma Sooners for two of its final three matches of the season. The teams will square off on Tuesday and Wednesday, with both matches starting at 8 p.m. ET at McCasland Fieldhouse.
The Sooners (10-15, 4-9) were originally scheduled to travel to Morgantown on Saturday, Oct. 24. However, due to travel issues the team could not make it to West Virginia and the match was rescheduled. As WVU (5-21, 0-13) will face OU twice in Norman this season, the Sooners are slated to black a pair of contests in Morgantown in 2016.
“It’s going to be a challenge to play a team back-to-back on its home court,” said coach Reed Sunahara. “We will need to take some of the positive things we had on Saturday against Kansas and build upon that this week. We look to make improvements, both in practice and in games, every day.”
This week will be the eighth and ninth all-time meetings between the Sooners and the Mountaineers. The series started in 1999 when OU took a 3-0 neutral site win and resumed in 2012 when WVU joined the Big 12. Oklahoma has won all seven prior matches, and was ranked No. 25 in last season’s meeting on Nov. 1.
OU enters Tuesday’s match with a 10-15 overall mark and a 4-9 record in league play, most recently sweeping TCU 3-0. Madison Ward leads the team and ranks ninth in the Big 12 with 2.99 kills per set, while setters Julia Doyle (seventh) and Audrey Alford (ninth) average 7.49 and 6.21 assists per set, respectively. Marion Hazelwood averages just over a block per set (1.05) to rank fifth in the Big 12, while Micaela Spann is sixth at 1.00 blocks per set.
WVU is coming off a 3-0 loss to No. 9 Kansas on Saturday at the WVU Coliseum. Morgan Montgomery had 12 kills while Gianna Gotterba had 15 digs in the loss. Haley Roe had 29 assists on 34 WVU kills and added a trio of block assists. Prior to the match, WVU honored graduating seniors Caleah Wells and Brittany Sample.
Saturday’s match against No. 9 Kansas marked the fourth time this season the Mountaineers have faced a team ranked in the top-25 of the AVCA Poll. WVU also faced No. 2 Texas (Sept. 25), No. 12 Kansas (Oct. 3) and No. 5 Texas (Nov. 5). The team opened the season at Michigan, who was later ranked as high as No. 24 in the poll.
Montgomery and Wells will both end the season with their names etched in the West Virginia volleyball program record books. Montgomery has totaled 340 kills on the season with three matches left to play, ranking her fifth in the sophomore season records. Her 3.74 kills per set, should she finish the season at that number, ranks third in the sophomore records. Wells has notched 41 block assists this season for a total of 255 blocks in her career. That number sits ninth in WVU’s all-time block assists rankings.
