Two-win weekend as UNT volleyball clinches tourney spot
Ehsan Azad / Staff Writer
The Mean Green volleyball team has clinched its first trip to the Conference USA tournament at the end of the season with wins at home over Louisiana Tech University on Friday and Tulane University on Sunday.
Louisiana Tech
UNT (15-12, 7-4) returned to the Mean Green Volleyball Complex to beat Louisiana Tech University (7-18, 1-9) in straight sets. The match (25-10, 25-16, 25-16) was never close and the Mean Green shut down the Louisiana Tech offense to a .168 attack percentage while posting a .522 attack percentage of its own.
“It was about controlling our side of the net, and we did really well,” head coach Andrew Palileo said.
It all started and ended with sophomore outside hitter Carnae Dillard who put in 14 kills and 9 digs. Senior middle blocker Karissa Flack had 8 kills and senior outside hitter Courtney Windham added 6 more.
“We just did our game plan and we didn’t make a lot of errors,” Dillard said. “In the first set, we only had one error and that’s what we worked at all week.”
On senior night, libero Shelby Tamura, defensive specialist Addison Lamb, Windham and Flack were honored before the game.
Tulane
On Sunday, UNT won a back-and-forth affair with Tulane University (22-3, 8-2) in four sets, who was ranked third in Conference USA coming into the game.
“Give our girls a lot of credit for fighting back, especially having the lead in the first set, Tulane coming back and then finishing it off in the end,” Palileo said.
The Mean Green was led by Dillard once again, who had 15 kills and 12 digs for the match and helped close out Tulane in the third and fourth set after being held in check in the second. Windham delivered another big performance with 11 kills and seven blocks.
“The back row had some amazing passes,” Windham said. “The credit goes to them, because I can’t do anything until they pass and set first.”
The team is now in the conference tournament for the first time and is looking for a first-round bye in the upcoming tournament.
“We always want more and to go to the next level, and this is just the beginning,” Windham said.
The team will have a bye on Friday before they play their final home game of the season next Sunday against the University of Texas at El Paso.
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