MOREHEAD, Ky. - Morehead State volleyball welcomes in Dayton for a non-conference tilt on Wednesday night at 6 p.m. ET.
The Eagles enter the contest at 9-14 overall and 5-5 in OVC play, while the Flyers are 22-1 on the year.
"It's a great opportunity to step outside of conference play, especially when we're hosting such a strong team that has a great tradition of excellence," said head coach
Jaime Gordon. "Their coaching staff does a fantastic job with training and preparing, so we're looking forward to a fun test. But, ultimately our goal is approach the game as an opportunity to get better going into the weekend. It's a really tight race within in the OVC standings and we have a couple more home matches that we have to take advantage of."
Morehead State is locked into a three-way tie for fifth place in the OVC standings and just one game out of fourth.
The Eagles split last weekend, falling to UT Martin prior to downing Southeast Missouri. It marks the fifth straight week that they have split the week in OVC play.
In the win over SEMO, they ran an effective 6-2 attack that utilized sophomore
Jordan Jones and senior
Bailey Nichol as setters. Nichols finished with a team-high 28 assists, while adding seven kills, and Jones recorded 18 assists and 14 kills. Overall, the Eagles had 51 kills and hit .182, closing the match with a .241 hitting efficiency in the clinching fourth set.
"One of the things that kind of gets lost in their performance, running the 6-2, is how well they played defense," said Gordon. "Bailey had 11 digs and Jordan had seven, and when your setters are playing that well on defense it allows you to be pretty effective."
Nichol and Jones' strong efforts defensively helped propel the Eagles to a tremendous overall defensive performance against the Redhawks as they finished with 68 digs and 14 blocks in four sets. Sophomore
Merideth Jewell led the team with 20 digs, while sophomore
Maddie Fella recorded nine block assists. Senior
Sydney Schuler added a block solo and five block assists, while freshman
Karlee Reynolds had four block assists.
Following the match with the Flyers, Morehead State remains home to host Tennessee Tech on Friday night at 6:00 p.m. ET and Jacksonville State on Saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. ET. The match on Saturday will be Senior Day as the Eagles recognize seniors Nichol, Schuler,
Hope Rillema, and
Stacy Silver.
