ST. LOUIS – The second ranked and top seeded University of Missouri-St. Louis volleyball team opened the GLVC Tournament with a sweep of eighth seeded Upper Iowa on Friday at the Williamsville High School Fieldhouse in Williamsville, Ill. The Tritons improve to 29-0 while the Peacocks finish their season with a record of 11-17.
UMSL jumped out to a four-point lead to begin the match but Upper Iowa battled back to tie it at 13 on a kill from Zoe Semelroth. The Tritons seized control of the opening frame thanks to a 7-2 run behind three kills from
Lexie Rang and two more from
Delaney Humm to build a five-point lead.
UMSL stretched its lead to as many as six after an ace serve from
Caitlin Bishop but the Peacocks continued to fight getting back-to-back kills from Lydia Imbrogno and Martha Pace to cut the lead to four. The Tritons closed out the set scoring the final three points to win the stanza 25-18 on a block from Rang and
Hannah Copeland.
The middle frame was back-and-forth early before UMSL took control thanks to a 6-2 run to build a six-point cushion. Upper Iowa got as close as five after a ball handling error by Bishop but wouldn't draw any closer as the Tritons scored the final seven points to take the set 25-13.
Humm led UMSL in the frame recording nearly half of the team's 15 kills as it .351 in the stanza with 15 kills against two errors in 37 chances.
The Tritons took an early two-point lead in the third frame but the Peacocks countered with a 4-1 run to take its only lead of the match at 5-4 after a kill from Semelroth. UMSL regained the lead after three straight kills from Rang sparked a 10-4 run that put the Tritons in front for good at 14-9.
Upper Iowa cut the lead to 14-11 but wouldn't get any closer than that as the Tritons scored 10 of the next 15 points to get to match point after Humm's 16th kill of the contest. The Peacocks staved off the first match point as Nicole Pozorski and Kailey Porter blocked Humm. UIU thought they had fought off a second match point but after a review it was deemed a Peacock touched Humm's attack attempt on its way out of bounds resulting in the final point for UMSL.
The Tritons finished the match hitting .375 with 50 kills against eight errors in 112 swings. Humm led the way with a match-high 17 kills while Rang added 15.
Mya Elliott and
Hailey Flowers had six and five kills respectively. Bishop had a match-high 40 assists, Rang, Humm and Copeland had two blocks apiece while
Kylie Adams had three aces to go along with 14 digs.
Upper Iowa was held to a .183 hitting percentage with 31 kills against 12 errors in 104 chances. Semelroth led the Peacocks with nine kills while Imbrogno and Madelyn Rettler added seven and five kills respectively. Pozorski finished with 25 assists, Pace, Pozorski and Alexis Moses had two blocks each and Kaci Beesecker had a match-high 15 digs.
UMSL will take on fifth seeded Missouri S&T on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
