WVU Sweeps Georgia Southern

Saturday, August 27

State College, Pa.

4:30 p.m.

West Virginia University

1-2

Georgia Southern

0-3

Team	1	2	3	Final F
Georgia Southern	20	21	17	0
West Virginia	25	25	25	3

VBGroup-Main-082716.jpg

August 27, 2016 06:34 PM | Volleyball

Box Score

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Hitting .208 with 36 kills, the West Virginia University volleyball team claimed its first win of the season with a 3-0 sweep of Georgia Southern to finish out the Penn State Classic at Rec Hall in University Park, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening. WVU took the match by set scores of 25-20, 25-21 and 25-17.

Additionally, the Mountaineers posted 14.0 team blocks with four aces in the win.

“We improved a lot from our first set against Penn State to now,” said second-year head coach Reed Sunahara. “We still have some things to work on, but we're headed in the right direction. I think the opportunity to come and play in a tournament of this caliber was a great learning experience for our program.”

Payton Caffrey continued a stellar debut weekend, finishing in double-digit kills for the third straight match with 11. Caffrey hit .250 with five block assists and an ace.

Hannah Shreve head a team-best eight block assists while hitting .500 with eight kills. Rookies Natania Levak and Katelyn Evans tallied five kills apiece, both hitting better than .270. Mia Swanegan notched four kills as Morgan Montgomery added in a trio.

Swanegan recorded four blocks assists, with Levak adding another four. Erin Slinde also had a trio while finishing with 14 assists. Haley Roe led the way with 23 assists to go with five digs and a service ace.

Taylor Cross served two of WVU's four aces, while Gianna Gotterba led the floor defense with nine digs. Cross chipped in with six as well.

The Mountaineers hit .276 with 12 kills in the first set as Swanegan, Shreve and Levak scored a trio each. The squads kept thing close before a short Mountaineer run gave them a 10-7 lead on a Georgia Southern attack error. Levak and Shreve teamed for a block before Levak found the court with a kill to push WVU's lead to 16-11. The Eagles capitalized on four straight errors by the Mountaineers to come within four, with WVU leading 21-18. However back-to-back attacking errors on GSU gave the Mountaineers the 25-20 win in the set.

Back-to-back blocks capped a four-point run to give WVU a 6-4 lead in the second set. The Eagles knotted the score at six, then took five of the six rallies for an 11-9 advantage. The Mountaineers took advantage of four consecutive GSU miscues to tie the set at 16-16 before an Evans kill and an ace from Roe put the Mountaineers on top 20-19. Caffrey notched back-to-back kills and a pair of block assists to score the last four points as West Virginia claimed the 25-21 victory.

Shreve posted a pair of early blocks as the Mountaineers went up 4-1 in the third set, forcing Georgia Southern into a timeout. Undaunted, West Virginia continued on to a 12-7 advantage before Shreve again contributed to back-to-back blocks to make it 14-7. Three kills in a row by Evans pushed the lead to eight at 17-9, and a service ace from Cross kept it at eight with the score at 21-13. Swanegan put one on the court, followed by a service ace from Caffrey pushed WVU in front 23-15. Evans found the court to set up match-point for WVU before Shreve knocked down a kill on the second attempt for the 25-17 win as the Mountaineers claimed the 3-0 win.

WVU heads to Charleston to co-host the Capital Classic with in-state foe Marshall at the Charleston Civic Center on Friday and Saturday. The Mountaineers will square off with Indiana State at 10 a.m. on Friday to start the tournament before facing the Thundering Herd at 7:30 p.m.