Volleyball Rolls to a
Pair of Wins at Early Bird
August 22,
2008
MARIAN BOX SCORE |
ROBERT MORRIS BOX SCORE
DEARBORN, Mich. - - The 10th-ranked Madonna volleyball team
opened play at the 2008 Early Bird Challenge at Michigan-Dearborn on Friday and
came away with a pair of wins, both of the sweep variety over Marian and Robert
Morris.
MARIAN
MATCH
The Crusaders swept the Knights of Marian College in straight sets 25-18, 25-23
and 25-18. All-American Lubovj Tihomirova led the Crusader attack with 20
kills and was backed up with 13 from Mary McGinnis and 11 more from
Whitney Fuelling.
Set one of
the match saw Madonna establish the offense early as McGinnis gave MU a quick
2-0 lead with back-to-back aces from the service line. MU pushed the lead to
10-5 with kills from Fuelling, McGinnis and Tihomirova and forced Marian into a
time out.
Coming out
of the break, the Crusaders pushed the lead out further, up 20-11 before seeing
the Knights climb back into the match via a 5-2 run to make it 22-16. A kill
from McGinnis off of an Inta Grinvalds backset and a kill from Tihomirova
wrapped around a service error from Marian gave MU the 25-18 set one win.
The second
set was much closer as neither side could hold a lead of more than three and
that came with MC led 13-10 after a service ace. The Knights held onto the lead
until the Crusaders tied the set at 21-all on a Fuelling cross court kill.
Marian briefly retook the lead at 22-21 but three straight kills from McGinnis
gave MU the set at 25-23.
Set three
was again all Madonna as after leading 4-2, MU kept the lead at at-least five
points the rest of the match, using five kills from McGinnis and a .500 hitting
percentage from Tihomirova to seal up with sweep with a 25-18 win and a three
games to none win.
Grinvalds
posted 45 assists while Fuelling added five block assists to go along with her
first solo of the season. In total MU had 7.5 blocks as a team compared to six
for MC. Ashley Hanslits led the Knights with nine kills.
ROBERT
MORRIS MATCH
Match two of the day was all Madonna from the start as MU used six kills from
Tihomirova to go along with five more from Fuelling and 13 assists from
Grinvalds and downed the Eagles 25-12 in set one.
In set two,
the Crusaders hit at a .341 clip and used 16 total kills with seven more from
Tihomirova to win 25-18. Game three was much like game one as MU’s hitting
percentage of .217 out paced a -.130 rate from RMU for the 25-14 win.
Madonna
held Robert Morris to a .012 hitting percentage for the match (21 kills on 83
attempts with 20 errors), compared to posting .360 percentage for itself.
Tihomirova,
Fuelling and McGinnis led the way again with 14, 11 and 10 kills respectively.
Grinvalds paced the offense with 33 assists while Brynn Kerr and
Grinvalds posted 10 digs each.
Saturday’s
action sees MU taking on Point Park at 8:30am while the 1:00pm match features a
battle of the two winningest coaches in NAIA history as Mt. Vernon Nazarene’s
Paul Swanson and his 851 wins matches up with Madonna’s Jerry Abraham and
his 847 wins.
Contact:
Patrick Moore, Sports Information Director
(734) 432-5834
pimoore@madonna.edu
