Mountaineers Win WVU Invite with Dartmouth Sweep

Saturday, September 17

Morgantown, W.Va.

7:00 p.m.

West Virginia University

8-5

Dartmouth

6-4

Team	1	2	3	Final F
Dartmouth	22	18	20	0
West Virginia	25	25	25	3

Shreve-main-091716.jpg

September 17, 2016 09:46 PM | Volleyball

Box Score

Dartmouth Big Green

6-4

Final

West Virginia Mountaineers

8-5

Final Stats

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University volleyball team closed out the WVU Invitational with its third straight win, a 3-0 sweep of Dartmouth, on Saturday evening at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown. WVU (8-5) took the victory over the Big Green (6-4) in set scores of 25-22, 25-18 and 25-20 to win the tournament.

Payton Caffrey hit .297 with a team-best 16 kills and earned tournament MVP honors after leading the Mountaineers in all three matches. She was joined on the all-tournament team by Gianna Gotterba and Hannah Shreve.

“I thought they did a pretty good job over the weekend,” said second-year coach Reed Sunahara. “I was happy with the three wins. Any time you can win three is great. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, and we've got to keep playing to win.”

Shreve notched a pair of solo blocks and a pair of block assists in addition to five kills, hitting .400 in the win. Gotterba dug a team-best 17 balls and chipped in an ace and a trio of assists.

Natania Levak had eight kills and a trio of blocks in addition to 12 digs. Mia Swanegan hit .455 with six kills a team-best five blocks. Morgan Montgomery also tallied six kills.

Haley Roe assisted on 23 of WVU's 45 kills and finished the night with eight digs. Erin Slinde had 15 assists to go with a pair of blocks.

West Virginia hit .105 in the match with 45 kills and ten team blocks.

A pair of attacking errors on WVU helped Dartmouth to a 5-2 lead in the first set before the Mountaineers came back to tie the set on a kill by Swanegan. Three more in a row by the Big Green put West Virginia in a 14-11 hole before Sunahara used a timeout to regroup. Soon after, WVU scored five straight to knot the score 21-21 on a Dartmouth attacking error. Montgomery, Caffrey and Levak each netted a kill as WVU closed the set on a 3-0 run with the 25-22 win.

The Mountaineers took five of six from the Big Green early in the second set, going up 5-2 on a Big Green attacking error. Consecutive WVU errors, combined with a pair of kills, brought Dartmouth within one, down 12-11. Withstanding a timeout, West Virginia rattled off six in a row for a 19-12 advantage. Caffrey and Levak each had a pair of kills to put the Mountaineers up 24-16 before Caffrey found the floor again to win the set 25-18 for a 2-0 lead in the match.

After getting off to a 6-1 start in the third set, the Mountaineers came back from a Dartmouth timeout with back-to-back Caffrey kills on a 4-0 run that put the score at 10-3. The Big Green tallied nine straight midway through the set to cut WVU's lead to one at 17-16 before taking four of five for a 20-19 lead on a block. Four straight Dartmouth miscues put the Mountaineers in front, 23-20. Swanegan had a solo block then teamed with Slinde to end the set with a 25-20 win for the 3-0 sweep.

Emily Astarita had nine kills for the Big Green, who hit .079 with five team blocks.

West Virginia remains in Morgantown to open Big 12 play on Tuesday when No. 2 Texas comes to the WVU Coliseum for a 6 p.m. match.